Film review: Twilight - Breaking Dawn Part 1

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POOR EFFORT: Breaking Dawn Part 1 is even cheesier than the book.

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Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1M, 117 minutes

I MISS Catherine Hardwicke. She directed the first Twilight movie, which captured the weird, dreamlike atmosphere of the books. Since then, it's all been downhill.

The fourth of five movies, Breaking Dawn Part 1, is the worst so far. I'm a Twihard, and I didn't enjoy it: crucial emotional plotlines were ditched in favour of action, and the scriptwriter made up a bunch of lines that were even cheesier than Stephenie Meyer's originals.

In this movie, Bella and Edward marry, have sex for the first time, and have a baby. But the book is really about Bella standing up to Edward – she is fiercely protective of the foetus, while Edward wants it aborted because it will likely kill her. He spends the book distraught and filled with self-loathing. He spent the movie expressionless and annoying.

Two scenes were particularly bad. The dream sequence, in which Bella imagines her wedding turning into a bloodbath, was changed in a way that made it nonsensical. And a scene in which the werewolf pack argue through their telepathic connection was so poorly done it made me angry.

I'm left angsting over, rather than anticipating, the second instalment, due next year. There's not much plot left in the book, so no doubt we're in for a whole lot more pointless dream sequences and clumsy one-liners.

- © Fairfax NZ News