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Vampire flick missing some bite
By Christy Lemire |
November 25, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
LAUGHABLE probably isn't the word the makers of "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1" were aiming for, but there it is; laughter, at all the wrong places.
The fourth movie in the freakishly popular girl-vamp-wolf love triangle series is so self-serious, it is hard not to cackle at it. The dialogue is, of course, ridiculous and the acting ranges from stiff to mopey. But moments that should be pulsating with tension are usually hilarious because the special effects are still incredibly cheesy.
This latest installment has yet another new director - Bill Condon, a man capable of both panache ("Dreamgirls") and serious artistry ("Gods and Monsters"), little of which you will see here. And again the werewolves look jarringly out of place with their surroundings. In a technological age in which Gollum from the "Lord of the Rings" movies blends in seamlessly with everyone and everything around him, how are such sloppy visual effects still possible? Adam Sandler played opposite himself more convincingly in "Jack and Jill."
"Breaking Dawn - Part 1," the first of two films adapted from the final book in Stephenie Meyer's series (with part two coming next year), serves as a placeholder for the ultimate finale but is jam-packed with developments in its own right. (Melissa Rosenberg once again wrote the adapted screenplay.) So much happens that you wonder, how can there be another entire film after this? Alas, there will be.
Part one begins with Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her vampire beau, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), marrying in a lavish, romantic outdoor ceremony. Bella's childhood best friend and the other man in the equation, werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner, barely recognizable with his shirt on), stops by as a gesture of goodwill. Guests mingle and dance and you have to wonder, do they realize that the groom and his entire family are the living dead? Do their eerie, porcelain complexions and glowing amber eyes betray them? The mind wanders.
Anyway, finally Bella and Edward can have sex, the thing she has wanted all along but he has been reluctant to do for fear that deflowering her will, you know, kill her. Yes, the "Twilight" movies (and the books that inspired them) may be filled with swoony vampires and hunky werewolves, but they are firmly pro-abstinence - and, later, firmly anti-abortion.
This should be the happiest day of Bella's life but she is, of course, nervous and miserable in general. Because she is Bella; Stewart maintains her usual sullen look for most of the picture. After the ceremony, Edward whisks her away to a private island off the Brazilian coast to make sweet, sweet vampire love to her. It is the moment we've all been waiting for, and we get to see none of it. All that is left the next morning is a broken bed frame, fluffs of down floating in the air and a baby growing inside the new bride. That's how good Edward is.
From here, "Breaking Dawn" devolves into a debate about what to do with this potentially dangerous hybrid spawn. Whether to keep it is never really in question, even though it is developing at an alarming rate, eating Bella up from the inside and threatening her very life. She waits for the baby to arrive and everyone else sits around discussing while Jacob's werewolf pals hover outside the Cullen clan's door, prepared to pounce, which, again, is meant to be ominous but instead comes off as just plain silly.
The score from Carter Burwell, the veteran composer and longtime Coen brothers collaborator, is surprisingly tinkly and intrusive and it further undermines the film's tone. The Twi-hards flooding theaters this weekend probably will not care, though. This is what they have been longing for, and it will be music to their ears.
The fourth movie in the freakishly popular girl-vamp-wolf love triangle series is so self-serious, it is hard not to cackle at it. The dialogue is, of course, ridiculous and the acting ranges from stiff to mopey. But moments that should be pulsating with tension are usually hilarious because the special effects are still incredibly cheesy.
This latest installment has yet another new director - Bill Condon, a man capable of both panache ("Dreamgirls") and serious artistry ("Gods and Monsters"), little of which you will see here. And again the werewolves look jarringly out of place with their surroundings. In a technological age in which Gollum from the "Lord of the Rings" movies blends in seamlessly with everyone and everything around him, how are such sloppy visual effects still possible? Adam Sandler played opposite himself more convincingly in "Jack and Jill."
"Breaking Dawn - Part 1," the first of two films adapted from the final book in Stephenie Meyer's series (with part two coming next year), serves as a placeholder for the ultimate finale but is jam-packed with developments in its own right. (Melissa Rosenberg once again wrote the adapted screenplay.) So much happens that you wonder, how can there be another entire film after this? Alas, there will be.
Part one begins with Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her vampire beau, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), marrying in a lavish, romantic outdoor ceremony. Bella's childhood best friend and the other man in the equation, werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner, barely recognizable with his shirt on), stops by as a gesture of goodwill. Guests mingle and dance and you have to wonder, do they realize that the groom and his entire family are the living dead? Do their eerie, porcelain complexions and glowing amber eyes betray them? The mind wanders.
Anyway, finally Bella and Edward can have sex, the thing she has wanted all along but he has been reluctant to do for fear that deflowering her will, you know, kill her. Yes, the "Twilight" movies (and the books that inspired them) may be filled with swoony vampires and hunky werewolves, but they are firmly pro-abstinence - and, later, firmly anti-abortion.
This should be the happiest day of Bella's life but she is, of course, nervous and miserable in general. Because she is Bella; Stewart maintains her usual sullen look for most of the picture. After the ceremony, Edward whisks her away to a private island off the Brazilian coast to make sweet, sweet vampire love to her. It is the moment we've all been waiting for, and we get to see none of it. All that is left the next morning is a broken bed frame, fluffs of down floating in the air and a baby growing inside the new bride. That's how good Edward is.
From here, "Breaking Dawn" devolves into a debate about what to do with this potentially dangerous hybrid spawn. Whether to keep it is never really in question, even though it is developing at an alarming rate, eating Bella up from the inside and threatening her very life. She waits for the baby to arrive and everyone else sits around discussing while Jacob's werewolf pals hover outside the Cullen clan's door, prepared to pounce, which, again, is meant to be ominous but instead comes off as just plain silly.
The score from Carter Burwell, the veteran composer and longtime Coen brothers collaborator, is surprisingly tinkly and intrusive and it further undermines the film's tone. The Twi-hards flooding theaters this weekend probably will not care, though. This is what they have been longing for, and it will be music to their ears.
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