So you know how sometimes you get really super constipated so you get some laxatives and throw them back but it doesn’t seem to help, and now it’s been a couple days since you last dropped the kids off at the pool and there’s pain in your lower abdomen so you go to the store and buy the X-Treme Laxatives and slam them down like candy which makes your innards start percolating but still, try as you might, you’re not seeing any action on the bowl, and as time passes you’re in increasingly agonizing pain like a knife twisting in your colon so finally you bite the bullet and head out to purchase prescription strength laxatives, the stuff plumbers use for seriously clogged drains, and you trade your iPad for a bottle from that sketchy guy who hangs out in the alleyway behind the Qwik-Stop, and you take four times the maximum recommended dosage, then one or two more for good measure, and you’re curled up in the fetal position in agonizing pain, tears trickling out the corners of your eyes as you feel the laxatives burn through your insides like a lightsaber chest-fucking Qui-Gon Jinn until finally you feel a murmur of movement so you crawl into the bathroom and clench and scream and grab at the walls as you beg any listening deity for the sweet merciful release of death, and finally, with supreme effort, you expel a turd the consistency and shape of a Rubik’s Cube into the toilet, and with the passageway finally cleared you lose another 25 pounds in the next thirty seconds.
There isn’t an adequate phrase in the English language to describe all of that, but I would like to propose it as the new definition of “Breaking Dawn: Part Two.”
I suppose I am being a little harsh, especially since this movie is quite a bit better from the first. Watching Breaking Dawn: Part One was a little like being strapped to The Machine in Count Rugen’s Zoo of Death: you could literally feel your life being sucked away. This movie, comparatively, is more like having bamboo shoots driven beneath your fingernails: it’s excruciatingly painful, but theoretically enjoyable if you get off on that sort of thing.
So let’s roll through this. We start off with Bella waking up and she has the Thirst so RPattz takes her hunting for deer but they stumble across a hiker who’s bleeding. As a freshly turned vampire Bella has absolutely no self-control to keep herself from tearing his lungs out and sucking down that sweet luscious blood….except that Bella is a Special and Unique Snowflake who CAN RESIST. Of course.
There’s a nice confrontation where Bella flips out when she finds out that Jacob has imprinted on her three-day-old baby. See, with werewolves they “imprint” on people, and then they’re destined to be together as soul mates and true loves FOREVER. Now, think about grown men imprinting on babies. Then waiting eighteen years or so as a “protective older brother or uncle” until the baby reaches sexual maturity and they can begin the real relationship. It’s a little sketchy. Jacob tries to explain it as best he can and it still comes across as really really fucking creepy. Sorry, Meyer. You should have avoided that plot thread. Fortunately, after a day or so Bella and Edward forget about it, or rationalize it. Either way it’s never mentioned again.
Speaking of the baby, for reasons I can’t complain they decided to CGI it, or at least CGI it’s face? Why? I have no idea. She spends most of her time gurgling and smiling and it stands to reason that with a little patience they could get all the shots they needed from an actual baby. On the flip side, maybe they wanted her to look a little unnatural, since she is. And they certainly succeeded, since she looks computer generated. Normally, I’d make a crack about getting a real visual F/X company like Weta Digital or ILM, but Hydraulx has done good work in the past (they did visual effects for The Avengers, for example). I really have to chalk this one up the filmmakers just not giving a shit. All of the CGI in this film is appallingly bad, and the werewolves are as terrible as ever.
The middle of the movie could be best summed up as “nothing happens.” Basically, the Volturi (Vampire government slash Mafia) think that baby Renesmee, who grows up to roughly age seven in a few weeks or so, is a demon child who will ruin everything so they want to come, kill everyone, and then take Alice back to be on their team, because she’s psychic. So the middle part of the movie is the Cullens dispatching people to different parts of the globe to bring all their friends together to “witness” (read: fight) in the final confrontation. We get an assortment of reasonably offensive ethnic stereotypes together and that’s about an hour’s worth of runtime for the plot that could be summed up in a 45 second montage.
I spent a lot of time bitching about how in the first film nothing happens and it’s padded as hell. The same thing happens here, although to a slightly lesser degree. These two films have a combined running time of 3 hours and 52 minutes, with enough actual story that, with padding, could barely fill a normal two-hour film. It’s utterly ridiculous.
Finally, it’s showdown time. If you’ve read the books (as I have) you know that Breaking Dawn is one of the most anti-climatic series endings of all time. They all square off, planning on killing each other, and you’re getting excited because you know there’s going to be a huge fucking battle, right? Instead, they have a calm, rational discussion, and everyone agrees to a truce and they walk away. It’s the most extreme case of literary coitus interruptus I’ve ever seen. Of course, when watching the trailer, there’s scenes of people fighting. What could it mean? Was it some kind of gigantic cop-out?
You bet your sweet ass it is!
Alice rolls in to show Aro (head Volturi guy) the future, he doesn’t buy it, and shit goes down. We’re then treated to a poorly choreographed ten-minute mostly-CGI fight scene between vampires and werewolves where a couple Cullens buy the farm, and despite being outnumbered ten to one the Cullens and Friends proceed to hand the Volturi their asses on a plate with all the trimmings. You’re starting to think to yourself, all right! Finally some action at the end of this five-movie cinematic abortion. Then psych! It turns out that everything that just happened was all Alice showing Aro a vision of the future of what *would* happen if he decided to fight. Fooled you! Aro realizes that despite his overwhelming strength in numbers and powers he can’t win…for some reason…and decides to retreat, and everyone goes home happy. I’d like to call this the biggest simultaneous cop-out and anti-climax in the history of film, but to give the director some credit, at the very least there was a few minutes of action, unlike the book this was based off.
The acting is as terrible as ever. Kristen Stewart is our generation’s Keanu Reeves: inexplicably popular despite the inability to change her facial expressions. Everyone else is reasonably mediocre with the exception of Michael Sheen (Aro) who is as ridiculously over-the-top as prancing homosexual vampire. The lone exception being the always incredible Wendell Pierce, who unfortunately only has about 90 seconds of screentime.
Few other minor complaints: Alice randomly disappears which is never explained, she’s just suddenly gone. But she’s left Bella clues, which is also never explained. One of these clues was the title page torn out of The Merchant of Venice. “Huh,” thinks our heroine. So she gets up and walks 10 feet to the bookshelf, takes out The Merchant of Venice, and a single page over from the torn-out page is ANOTHER CLUE. Cue Kristen Stewart’s monotone voiceover “Alice had left a clue she knew only I would understand.” Really? You don’t have to be fucking Sherlock Holmes to piece this together.
Another lovely bit is where Bella leaves Forks and the camera pans up and bam, there’s Seattle, 15 minutes away. Uh, maybe not. It’s more like 100 miles as the crow flies, and there’s a mountain between them that you have to drive around.
Edward and Bella’s little house has a fireplace and a roaring fire. Why? They don’t need to keep warm, they’re vampires. But it’s romantic? Let’s not forget that fire is one of the few things that actually kills vampires. Of course, later on, all the vampires hang out in the snowy woods and tell stories…around a bonfire.
One of the vampires is The Last Airbender. Dead serious.
I mentioned all the vampires being ethnic stereotypes. The most ridiculous is right near the end when a couple of Native Americans show up….in loincloths. Guys. It’s two thousand and fucking twelve. I’m going out on a limb here, but most Native Americans wear jeans and t-shirts. You know, like the entire tribe of Native American werewolves?
Lastly, at the very end, there’s a dramatic closing credits where they roll through and they show us shots of every single character from all five movies with the actor’s names and the character names. I suppose I’m biased because I think (rightfully so) that the series is a utter crock of shit, an abysmal failure on every possible level that has damaged the careers of numerous actors and filled the minds of impressionable young girls with incredibly unrealistic visions of hypercontrolling abusive men and presented this as the greatest love story of all time, and that such dramatic closing credits should be reserved for films that are actually good, but maybe I’m biased.
That’s about it. It’s really bad. I wouldn’t recommend it.
joe writes 
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