The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Peter Facinelli, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed
Directed by: Bill Condon
Rating: 
If the first three Twilight films were a pre- and early teenage nice girl's fantasy writ large on the silver screen (drop dead gorgeous guy falls for the klutzy girl next door) then Breaking Dawn is the stuff of nightmares (eighteen-year-old has sex twice and next things she knows, she's up the duff). And for Bella Cullen (née Swan) it's double bad news, because the bun in her oven is a blood-craving vampire that's slowly destroying her from the inside. Ew!
Sulky hubby Edward thinks she should get rid, but with her usual steely determination disguised as emo-wracked weakness, Bella sees it as miracle and is determined to see the pregnancy through to the bitter (or bitten) end.
And then of course there's best friend Jacob the werewolf and his wolfpack, who aren't too pleased about the impending addition to the Cullen clan, leaving our young wolverine anti-hero caught between a fanged glittery rock and a fanged furry hard place.
Sigh. I only had myself to blame. I knew this film was going to be bad, yet I went to see it anyway. Bad, yes. Ludicrously plotted, mawkishly sentimental and just plain embarrassing in its depiction of marriage as a terrifying, sacrificial ordeal. Yet I didn't expect it to be so (presumably unintentionally) hilarious. For vampire cousins that looked as if they'd just tottered from the set of TOWIE to get jiggy at Bella and Edward's wedding. For wolves to moot like Ents, speaking through vocoders like Daleks. For Bella to decide to call her demon baby.. wait for it... wait for it... spoiler alert... Renesmé. (Or EJ if it's a boy, for Edward Jacob. Cuz Jedward was already taken, I suppose.)
I know, I know, it's just way too easy to be snide about the Twilight films. And yet there must be something about this pile of nonsense that keeps me coming back, that makes me care what happens to the central trio of characters and want to know what happens next. Is it because I recognise in the ridiculous, overwrought romance the ridiculous, overwrought fantasies I concocted when I was a teenager, in which certain rock stars who shall remain nameless metamorphosed into brooding, tormented Heathcliffs to my 1980s Cathy. (Possibly you didn't need to know that...)
Who knows. Either way, having slapped two paltry stars on the last effort (come on, the talking wolves deserve some recognition – I haven't laughed that much at the pictures since School of Rock) I'll still be first in line for the finale and my last dose of smouldering, homoerotic vampire/lupine tension, skeletal thinspiration and the Revenge of Michael Sheen. Bring it on...
Sun Don't Shine
Wuthering Heights