Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

MAYBE THIS REALLY SHOULD BE AN OVERLOOKED FILM: BREAKING DAWN PART 2

A lot of people I know have seen Breaking Dawn Part 2, the final episode of the Twilight Saga, and loved it.  I thought I'd present a differing opinion.  This review by Diana Beechener comes from the November 15 - November 21 issue of Bay Weekly, a paper based in Annapolis.  (Copyrighted 2012 by New Bay Enterprises, Inc., and reprinted with permission.)  Full disclosure:  I have not seen the movie but, based on the earlier ones I endured, Diana's opinion is spot-on.


                                              Twilight Saga:  Breaking Dawn Part 2

     Our long national nightmare is ending.  Breaking Dawn Part 2 is the final nail in this overwrought vampire-love story's coffin.  The movie picks up where Part 1 left off, with a newly dead Bella (Kristen Stewart:  Snow White and the Huntress) awakening as a vampire.
     Now she's free to zoom around the forest and have super-strength sex with her husband Edward (Rob Pattinson:  Cosmopolis).  The only thing standing in her way is the evil Volturi clan, who believe that  Edward and Bella have broken vampire law by turning out a child.  Apparenly they didn't get the message that Edward and Bella are super-special snowflakes whose love is unparalled in any universe, meaning that they were the only vampire-human couple ever able to naturally conceive and birth a human-vampire child.
     Now the couple must prepare for a vampire civil war and deal with the news that their dear friend, werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner), is in love with their baby daughter.
     As the last in the simpering Twilight Saga, you can expect horrendous acting, ridiculous scripting, squealing teenage girls and their even creepier squealing mother.  If you're going to buy a ticket to see this mess, there's nothing I can do to discourage you.  But I implore movie goers who have managed to avoid the series so far to keep their streak going.
Prospects:  Bloodless - PG-13 - 115 mins.

by Diana Beechener for Bay Weekly, the independent weekly newspaper of the Annapolis capitol region in print and online at www.bayweekly.com.

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For today's actual Overlooked Films and/or A/V, stop by Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom for all the links.  (And, yes, sight unseen, I plan to overlook Breaking Dawn Part 2 well into my dotage.)

9 comments:

  1. The number of teenagers at the theater where we were seeing LINCOLN was astounding. It was a huge even for them. Some arrived in limos and costumes.

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    1. I don't enjoy movie theaters any more, Patti -- too many distractions from the audience for me. I am glad, though, that the kids enjoy the movie but the attraction of the simpering characters continues to confound me.

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  2. I saw the trailer announcing this was the best Twilight movie. But then, the bar wasn't set very high, I guess.

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  3. I must not be seeing any of the reviews you refer to, Jerry...I've seen nothing but (well-deserved, I gather) mockery of the entire series. But, gosh, Stewart's public persona and her performances seem unalloyedly smug of late. Kind of like Angelina Jolie without the sad undercurrent.

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    1. No glowing reviews, Todd, just people I know who have seen the movie. My best guess: they may have had a genetic predisposition to like the film.

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  4. I agree with your "genetic predisposition to like the film" theory, Jerry. Most of my female students have seen BREAKING DAWN PART 2 or plan to see it this weekend. This has to be the Super Bowl of romantic vampire movies.

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    1. I don't know, George. The Super Bowl is entertaining...

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  5. That this series of books (and now movies) is more popular with middle-aged women than teens says a lot about our culture. I just learned that a woman I work with (mid 40s) and her mother read all the books and went to see all the movies. I was dumbfounded. I will never understand the appeal of vampires as erotic and "romantic" figures. To me it's perverse to view love and sex -- two of the most fundamental aspects of being human and alive -- in terms of death and decay.

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    1. I have always thought kissing a vampire would be one of the most disgusting things in the world what with the whole dead and decayed body thing and probably there would be a few maggots involved. Yuck!

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