A Poignant Review
Happy Tuesday, everyone!
We have so many guest DP bloggers tonight! How exciting! The following review is by Dirty Pop alum Shannon Ward and was originally published in this week’s Water Tower. It is a review for the newest Twilight film…The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. It is a great read! Thanks, Shannon!
(the link to this week’s publication of the WT: http://www.uvm.edu/~watertwr/)
Enjoy!
-Molly
The word “appalling,” meaning awful, terrible, and horrifying, originates from the Old French word “apalir,” meaning “to grow pale.” It is, therefore, the perfect word to describe The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I, which was appalling in so many ways, the first of which being that every character was so pale that they all looked like a blood-sucking family of mimes.
I saw this movie over break, managing to snag a front row seat right in front of a squealing group of thirteen-year-old fan girls. I did not join in their enthusiasm even though, yes, I admit, I have read Twilight. And yes, unfortunately, this movie followed the book pretty well.
If you are unfamiliar with the story then DON’T SEE THIS MOVIE. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. If you are familiar with the story then you know that the movie starts with Bella the human and Edward the vamp finally tying the knot (I mean, they’re eighteen. Talk about taking your time, eh?). The newlyweds fly off to an island owned by Edward’s filthy rich vampire father and they lose their virginity in a passionate, bed-breaking bout of lovemaking. The first forty-five minutes of the movie views like a feel-good romance, with the central conflict being that Edward refuses to sleep with her after that first night owing to the fact that the bed got just as fucked as they did (meaning they literally broke the bed in half) and his wife walked away from the experience covered in bruises. Edward is nothing if not rational.
But after forty-five minutes this movie takes a turn. You see, Bella and Eddie don’t use condoms because they figure, since Edward is technically dead, he does not have the ability to impregnate her. But oh does he impregnate her. Edward’s undead sperm beats the odds and manages to create a horrifying, terrible, appalling vampire fetus that literally starts eating Bella from the inside. Finally, I thought as I watched from my front row seat. Something awesome is happening.
But, alas, I was mistaken. No, nothing happens. Bella sits on a couch and gets gaunter and more pregnant and more disgusting, Jacob runs around in the woods as a wolf all upset and shit, and Edward is just mad and pale and sparkly, for like literally an hour of the movie. When a film has a running time of 117 minutes, forty-five of those minutes are spent on the vampire sex and another sixty are spent on the woes of vampiric pregnancy, then that only leaves twelve precious minutes for a plot climax. And oh how those twelve minutes were utilized.
I was fortunate enough (in a sense) to have read the book before seeing the movie, meaning that I had a little warning but even so, when you’re sitting in the front row, in a seat nailed to the floor, facing a giant screen with the climax of Breaking Dawn Part I projected onto it, twelve minutes can seem like an eternity.
So the climax of this movie is basically a detailed account of the result of Edward’s climax. Oh, I should mention now, this film is not suitable for women who are pregnant or may become pregnant. We go from feel-good romance, to family drama, to a scene from Saw V with literally no transition. There’s Bella innocently talking about her horrible ideas for baby names, when suddenly her spine snaps, her ribs break and her huge throbbing stomach is chewed open by her devoted husband in the most appalling C-section imaginable.
But, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t the sickening birth or even the rough vampire sex that was most appalling about this movie. No, it was the fact that even though this movie made $61.8 million dollars in one weekend, the special effects still looked like graphics from a cheap video game. It was appalling that even though they could have absolutely fit the entire book into a single movie, (anyone who has read the book knows that absolutely nothing happens in the second half. Or the first, for that matter), they had to stretch it out, doubling their profits by making two incredibly boring atrocities. I can think of at least 5 two and half minute long montages that were obviously only there so that they could drag this sucker out into a full-length feature. Hollywood should think about enforcing a montage cap, because this was just ridiculous.
So, if you’re looking to be appalled, then be my guest. If not, then I do not recommend seeing this. Not even for those “it’s so bad it’s good” lovers. It’s just a rollercoaster ride of bored, disgusted, bored, bored, AHHHHH OH MY GOD WHAT, appalled.
