If there is one thing that sets "Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1," apart from its predecessors, it is that it has a clear message and drives it home. While the themes of the previous movies were vaguely something like "love is eternal," or "always choose the guy with the nicer car" or "brown people are actually werewolves, duh," the moral of this particular story is much more direct. "Breaking Dawns"' lesson for young girls is, in the words of Coach Carr from "Mean Girls" (a wise man from a much better teen movie): "Don't have sex, because you will get pregnant. And die."
But I am getting ahead of myself, so let's backtrack a bit. The film opens with preparations for the marriage of Bella Swan (a particularly drippy-dippy Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson, dead as ever), 18 and 110 years old, respectively.
With Bella having completed her first high school graduation and Edward his 20th (because if you have an eternity to live, high school is where you would want to spend it), they are finally ready to join in the holy bonds of matrimony. With college plans thrown out the window and a complete disregard for anyone she cared for before she met Edward, Bella throws on a white dress and walks down the aisle at her perfect purple wedding.
The party is lavish, the father of the bride is adorably kooky and pretty much everyone is having a great time. Nobody seems all that concerned as to why Bella, who, in the previous movies, we are supposed to believe is somewhat smart and practical, is giving up her future to marry a sparkly dead guy before her wisdom teeth come in.
There is a lone voice of reason in this crowd, Bella's bitchy pal Jessica (Anna Kendrick, one of the few redeeming components of this movie), who assumes this whole shindig must be because Bella got knocked up. "I mean," Jessica remarks, "why else would you get married at 18?"
However, reasonable folks like Jessica are quickly brushed aside as Mr. and Mrs. Cullen fly off to a private island in Brazil for their honeymoon! They spend two weeks catching some rays, exploring waterfalls and finally getting it on. This is the first time for the couple, because Edward would not put out until Bella put a ring on it.
However, the long-anticipated consummation of their love is not quite as romantic as viewers would expect. You see, their wedding night results in a broken bed, a bruised bride and a freaky demon-vampire baby. But aside from that, it was totally great.
Because the demon baby is literally destroying Bella from the inside out, the newlyweds are forced to leave paradise so Bella can go straight to the hospital. Oh no wait-we're in Twilight-verse, so the next logical step is not a life-saving technique but to wait it out at Edward's house.
As Bella wastes away, her baby causes something of a supernatural-political crisis, and the friendly neighborhood werewolves freak out (though we are never really told why). Jacob (a set of abs called Taylor Lautner), Bella's best werewolf friend with sort-of benefits, defects from his were-pack and joins the Cullens in protecting the infirm-as-usual Bella.
The whole vampire-werewolf war serves as a mere distraction, as Jacob's true function in that house is revealed. After a harrowing, bloody birth scene in which Bella technically dies for a little while, the demon baby emerges healthy and adorable as if it never meant to suck the life out of her mom.
Seeing this bouncing baby girl, Jacob "imprints," which is even grosser than it sounds. His weird werewolf psyche automatically has no choice but to commit to this infant and wait till she grows up to finally be with her. Thus, young ladies, are the repercussions of fornication: you will get pregnant, you will die and to top it off, your long-trusted friend will creep on your newborn baby. So to all those conservative politicians out there trying to teach abstinence to impressionable youth (I'm look at you, Sen. Mary Lazich), cool it with the dismantling of sex-ed. All you have to do is take them to this movie, and they will join up with the clergy before you can say "syphilis."
Aside from the puritanical message and grotesque details, the real problem with this movie is that it creates a situation where everything changes, but nobody has changed at all. Despite going through marriage and pregnancy, Bella and Edward are as much a couple of boring teenagers as they ever were, just as Stewart and Pattinson bring nothing different to their characters.
Lautner, as before, just saunters around shirtless while clenching his jaw instead of actually acting. The film does benefit from the direction of Bill Condon ("Chicago"), who in his first stab at the Twilight series brings skill and a new energy to the franchise (and not to mention a pretty decent soundtrack). However, despite his best efforts, the story is just too ridiculous to make into anything else. Sorry, Condon, you just can't polish a turd.
