Emo Soap-Opera Struggles with Fourth Installment

Too long and too joyless, non-but the most hardcore fans will enjoy the latest of the smash-hit Twilight franchise

In the first part of the last part of the mind-bogglingly successful franchise we see Bella (Kirsten Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) finally get married and go off on a honeymoon. Things turn for the worse, however, when Bella manages to get pregnant with a demon/vampire foetus and thus manages to upset the often shirtless werewolves who think she should get an abortion. As an explicitly pro-life show of how ‘strong’ she has become, she decides to keep it – with the rest of the film being divided between talking CGI dog-people arguing and Bella pouting.

With a staggering 27% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, Breaking Dawn’s biggest achievement is that it actually managed to beat New Moon as the worst reviewed film of the ‘saga’ so far. From gentle critiques of Jacob’s (Taylor Lautner) repeated ‘shirt-ripping moments’ to describing it as part “medical horror, part cheesy Victoria’s Secret catalogue shoot” the critics have been scathing, (and apart from Twihards, so have normal movie-goers).

"I'm pregnant, and to show it I'm gonna spend half the film rubbing my belly like real pregnant girls do

For a film that discusses death, obsession and lust and features both a sex scene and a somewhat gruesome birth scene, I was somewhat impressed that director Bill Condon managed to keep it 12A. The results of his efforts is a lot less impressive with 1 hour and 48 minutes of mawkish soap opera to struggle through. The only thing that makes it palatable is the occasional indadvertedly funny moment: from awkward, wooden dialog that it picked up from the book to some absolutly classic product placement with Edward at one point looking up ‘immortalicum’ on Yahoo! search, (at least it wasn’t Bing!).

The sex scene itself is another one of those indadvertedly hilarious moments. About as steamy as a 14-year-old girl’s imagination, we see Edward have such aggressive sex with our heroine that he hurts her (they literally break the bed), eventually getting her pregnant. Sweat-free and with artfully tangled sheets galore, I think the message was that Stephanie Meyer is either yet to learn of condoms or that vampire sperm is somehow acidic. Also, sex is painful and if you get pregnant you will die – but you still have to have that child! As mentioned, most of the rest of the film is them waiting for Bella to give birth.

If you forced me to find positives I would have to say, (scraping the last few atoms off that barrel), it finally proves Edward is not in fact gay (!) and that at least its faithful to the book. This makes it a long and cumbersome movie, but I am sure its die-hard fans won’t be put off. I say ‘die-hard’ because I am not sure casual fans will deal well with the length, (at least Harry Potter had a castle and good actors), or that parents will like having to explain some of the darker, more sexual themes to their kids.

Pretty much the only thing more depressing than the film itself is the fact that there’s another one coming out next November. Sigh…