I'm a guy, who read the books and shockingly enjoyed them despite the obvious albeit insignificant flaws. But because of my understanding of the books, I somehow saw the beauty of how this was actually done and executed. True, it could've been better, but I wasn't anywhere near disappointed.
I mean, let me take the story out for a second, and Breaking Dawn Part 1, dare I say, was possibly the best one in the saga. I thought the visual effects, especially towards the end, was superb, the fight scenes, though minimal, felt a little sharper than usual, the writing was relatively better (relatively as the operative word), the cinematography was still fantastic and the soundtrack, though a bit overbearing at times, was still gorgeous.
Oh, and the make up was a definite improvement from it's predecessor. Again, the Cullens toned down their cakey make-up and every single vampire was at their perfect level of pasty. Haha. Plus, how they made Bella Swan look sickly thin was pretty impressive almost incredibly disturbing.
As far as the acting was concerned, I thought it was generally fine. No one will win an Oscar for ANY of the performances in this film, but it's not as if they were trying to. Robert Pattinson was decent, Taylor Lautner was tolerable, but Kristen Stewart, to me, was an absolute revelation in this film. Some people criticized her for being such a poker face, but intentional or not, that's how the character was actually written and Kristen was the PERFECT fit for the role. She was awkward as usual, but there was depth in her portrayal.
Now, let's shove the story back in. I admit, the story was awfully thin as it was just all about the wedding, their honeymoon and yes, the pregnancy leading to Bella giving birth, which was truly grotesque. The writing was still cheesy as heck, but what do you expect? I mean, if you're looking for a meaningful story or a thought provoking teen drama, you should already know by now that you're in the wrong place.
But despite the obvious "thinness" of the story, I seriously enjoyed the stark contrast of that light almost blissful first half to the agonizing borderline disturbing second half. It was as if I was watching a romantic comedy film that suddenly went psychotic. Haha. The abrupt shift could actually give someone a momentary whiplash, but the whole execution was actually quite interesting.
Of course, there were a couple of things that didn't quite sit with me well. I thought the pacing was annoyingly uneven. I appreciated the fact that it took it's time to show how passionate Bella and Edward were with each other, but there was just too much of it that it felt like one LONG montage of kissing and cuddling. Yes, it was sweet, but it almost gave me diabetes. Haha.
Then, when the interesting things started to happen, I felt like everything was rushed. It went from one thing to the other so quickly that I was just unable to appreciate them fully. There was also no emphasis on the struggle Bella went through when deciding to keep the baby, which, to me, was a pretty interesting part of the book.
There were also too much of the wolf pack for my taste. For one, the wolf pack couldn't act to save their lives - now, I understand Jacob! Haha - and the dogs talking to each other was actually kind of jarring. One wolf even sounded like Megatron from Transformers because of too much echo. Haha. What was up with that?
Ultimately, Breaking Dawn Part 1 was like one huge buildup for the final installment and I consider this one to really prepare me for the second part of the final book, which I expect to be absolutely intense - in all sense of the word - literally and the revelatory kind. Watch it if you've read the book. Otherwise, you'll find it boring and utterly confusing and believe me, no one really wants to hear you complain about wasting your precious time because of this crap. Just saying.
RATING: 8/10
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