Breaking Dawn's DVD edition is just fine, but this high-def edition is the one you'll fully imprint on....
Summit / 117 Minutes / 2011 / Rated PG-13 / Street Date: February 11, 2012
Polarizing in epic, seismic ways, the Twilight saga is a fascinatingly empty example of mass entertainment in the internet age. Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) have been staring romantically into each other's eyes for three full films now, and even though melodramatic events line the halls of Breaking Dawn: Part 1, they don't stop now.
If anything can be said about this cinematic franchise, it's that what the first Twilight film delivered to its audience, all the other ones have also manifested. It would take a Twi-lifer of delirious confidence to defend the series as dramatic wholes in any convincing fashion - in short, all of us who have become suckers to these sparkly vampires know full well that they're terrible - but this teeny-bop story nevertheless keeps the tractor beam at full operational power.
What's so embarrassing about Twilight is that I will be the first to admit that the series is woefully cheesy and pseudo-goth mopey in all the worst ways, but there's a nugget of magic underneath its layers of soap opera stupidity that is enough to keep many of us coming back for more. Bella's and Edward's wedding night? The vampire baby Bella learns she will soon birth? Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and his werewolf angst? These plot points are thin as tracing paper as presented in Breaking Dawn: Part 1, but even though they don't work dramatically, they're vivid enough as placeholders that Twi-lifers eat them up and beg for more.
Breaking Dawn: Part 1, therefore, is 100% cinematically inevitable. It doesn't gel as a full motion picture, its emo-heavy soundtrack isn't as poppy nor as memorable as installments past, and stretched out into two double-hour installments, this final tale moves sometimes at a snail's pace, but I'll be damned: It scratches the itch. Even with fanboy jokiness, I'd never be able to recommend or applaud the picture, but for an audience who doesn't want to gag at the mere thought of it, this second-to-last Twilight picture delivers.
