Bad Movie Tuesday: Breaking Dawn Part 1

By: Sweet Sugar (Mark’s brother)

To put this review in context, a masculine adult male reviewing Breaking Dawn is like a sorority girl reviewing The Expendables or any Dolph Lundgren movie.  So of course, the Movies Films & Flix crew is giving Breaking “Yawn” a Bad Movie Tuesday nod, which seems like too easy of a target, but this is THE bad movie of the moment.

There’s no glory in slamming this movie along with the tidal wave of other bad reviews. It’s not like its stopping fully-invested Twilight fans from watching two hours’ worth of talking about feelings.  The movie has a 28 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but still cashed in $138 million in its opening weekend. It’s like the more the series is slammed, the more it grows, just like the Evil in The Fifth Element.

Reading about the Twilight movies with the endless use of the word “psychosexual” has been much more interesting than actually watching the movie. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from film critics …

• “So: Sex with a vampire. Finally. For three films now, the ‘Twilight’ narrative has practically goaded the audience into having intercourse on behalf of the characters.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Times

• “Yes, the most eagerly awaited deflowering in recent movie history takes place entirely off-screen.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

• “As much as I despise these movies, that is a parade I am not willing to rain on, no matter how much Stewart’s unrelenting sourness makes me regret my career choice. So party on Twi-hards, you have no apologies to make for your love of this pulpy, romantic saga; just don’t take it personally when the rest of us decide to party elsewhere.” – Matthew DeKinder, St. Louis Today

So yeah, it was a really bad movie, and thankfully I wasn’t the only guy in the theater sucking it up for the wifey.  The way that Kristen Stewart rubbed her baby bump unceasingly made me think about a pregnant Natalie Portman aimlessly brushing her hair while staring off into space in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. The wolf pack reminded me of the gang in West Side Story getting ready to “rumble.”  And I was surprised that the only opportunity for actual multi-dimensional acting was given to none other than Taylor Lautner.

The Movies Films & Flix suggestion to salvage the final movie: Switch Anna Kendrick with Kristen Stewart and pretend like nothing’s amiss. Some witty banter and more sex appeal would do wonders for the movie. Anna committed scene larceny in her bits and pieces throughout the series, and just imagine what she could do with a demon child, sassing the Volturi, and ordering around an over-sensitive Vampire hubby.

Movies about pregnancies to watch instead: Nine Months (1995) starring Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore, Tom Arnold, Joan Cusack, and a preppy non-scientific Jeff Goldblum, or Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) with Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci and Chris Rock at his best.