The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 (A CherryOnTop Review)

Starting today, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 will bring squealing audiences everywhere the most anticipated wedding since Kim Kardashian’s. Yes, Bella Swan and Edward Cullen are finally tying the knot after many long years of deferred desire. Diehard Twihards will not be disappointed.

As opposed to a fairy tale, where the drama ends with a wedding and “happily ever after” begins, Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 opens with Bella and Edward’s union and the difficulties only escalate from there. It’s bad enough that Bella chooses to remain fragile and human for the consummation of her marriage to her supernaturally strong and lusty vampire love. When Bella becomes pregnant, the child growing with unnatural speed inside of her threatens to shatter not only Bella’s frail body but also the uneasy truce between the vampires and werewolves of Forks. Talk about a difficult pregnancy!

Romantic escapism is the hallmark of novelist Stephanie Meyers’ wildly popular Twilight series. Breaking Dawn Pt. 1’s director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters) successfully produces the same fantastical quality as the book that the film is based on. With a solid script written by Melissa Rosenberg (screenwriter on all the Twilight films) and a stable of exquisitely attractive actors, Condon delivers the dream: a mixture of comic levity and melodrama that never grows too oppressive but never fails to enchant the eye.

Many cute comic performances surround the fairytale wedding, notably Billy Burke as Bella’s father, Charlie, who game-facedly lets go of his little girl (but he’s not losing a daughter, he’s gaining a vampire). Standing out among the tawny-eyed vampire contingent, Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene) garners laughs as she attempts to get a nervous Bella all gussied up for the wedding.

Breaking Dawn Pt. 1’s dramatic performances are somewhat less convincing; it’s possible the leads are too beautiful to be truly great actors. Then again, better acting could also destroy the effect. As earnest hero vampire Edward Cullen, Robert Pattinson is slightly wooden but sculpted as a marble statue. With her skinny legs and doe-like gaze, Kristen Stewart makes a believable skittish virgin and does a fine job portraying the understated but iron will of Bella Swan, the girl with the most complicated love life of any human. The only character with more convoluted personal problems would have to be Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). As a lone werewolf who sides with his pack’s mortal enemies out of love for a girl he’ll never have, Lautner broods and rages reasonably well. Throughout, he does exude—forgive me—a certain animal magnetism.

The decadent bad-guy vampires, the Volturi, appear rarely in Breaking Dawn Pt. 1, but Michael Sheen, playing Volturi leader Aro, oozes enough delicious vaudeville villainy to get audiences excited about The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2, slated for release in 2012. Don’t leave the theater as credits roll—you’ll want to catch his closing scene.

The magic of Breaking Dawn Pt. 1—and the Twilight series as a whole—relies on visual appeal. The wedding scene is picture perfect, and Bella and both Edward’s Brazilian honeymoon retreat and the Cullen house will have you on the phone to your interior decorator the second you leave the cinema. A few flaws persist from previous Twilight films. Vampires still have pale white faces and tan necks. (Fortunately, Condon has spared audiences the sight of sunlight on sparkling vampire skin.) The CGI werewolves look pretty good, although the vampire-werewolf fight scenes fall flat; revisit Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers to see an impossibly heroic man vs. beast fight done right.

My qualified opinion: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 is the best Twilight film yet. If you like your films dark and tortured, such as last year’s gorgeous Black Swan, Bella Swan will be no replacement. If you enjoy escaping into a lovely cinematic dream, if you know how to suspend your disbelief, check out Breaking Dawn Pt. 1. And under no circumstances should you wait to see this or any Twilight film at home by yourself on video. It’s a social phenomenon, best seasoned with the shrieks and yelps of fans.

I have only one real reservation: Was there enough shirtlessness? Discuss amongst yourselves.

- Elisa Mader
Twitter: @ElisaMader

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November 18th, 2011 | Mara | Comments Off |