The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
DIRECTED BY BILL CONDON
Of all the criticisms one might level at a film that features cherry-popping, bride-bruising, bed-destroying vampire sex; a subsequent, demi-demonic, spine-shattering teenage pregnancy; and Robert Pattinson performing an emergency C-section with his teeth, “boring” shouldn’t be among them. “Nonsensical,” clearly, and “laughable,” hopefully, but certainly not “boring.” And yet, that’s precisely what the unrelentingly insipid Breaking Dawn manages to be.
Part of what renders this manifestly gonzo subject matter so bland on screen is the fact that Summit Entertainment, which has made billions peddling the hitherto chaste series to a rabid tween audience, would never sanction the R rating that the material so desperately warrants. Instead, Bill Condon, director of Kinsey—about the pioneering sexologist—is tasked with delivering a PG-13 anti-abortion parable, where anything remotely racy is nipped in the bud with a tasteful fade to black.
Also to blame are Breaking Dawn‘s principal cast, who are not good at acting. As Edward, Pattinson’s wooden deliveries are perhaps defensible insofar as his pulse is meant to have stopped in 1918, while Kristen Stewart, as Bella, performs a passable imitation of a human female. But there’s no excusing Taylor Lautner, who, as Jacob, is less charismatic than his character’s lupine CGI double. (To his credit, Lautner is physically capable of removing his shirt, and Breaking Dawn is at least eager to please in this regard, with Jacob dutifully shedding his top within the film’s opening minute.)
Finally, the film bores because its fleeting instances of unintentional humour (lines like “Last night was the best night of my existence”) wane once Edward and Bella return from their Brazilian honeymoon. Knocked up something fierce, Bella spends most of film reclining on a sofa while Edward broods and a shirt-donning Jacob prowls, prepping for what proves to be less a climactic fight scene than a speedily resolved difference of opinion. The true drama, such as it is, is saved for Bella’s temporarily fatal attempts to evacuate her half-breed child, which Jacob immediately identifies as his soulmate. The latter development, admittedly, is pretty funny, but Breaking Dawn generally achieves the improbable feat of snatching ennui from the jaws of batshit insanity.