★About half way through this film, I hit the timeline button on my PS 3 to see how much longer it was going to be. Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 is that bad.
At least the first half is. It’s a long wedding and honeymoon fantasy that was so long and so bad that I was sure throughout that something was about to happen. But it didn’t, and I was about to quit on the film when a story finally started. Newlyweds Bella and Edward return from their honeymoon with Bella carrying a miscegenetic, vampire/human child with all the attendant problems that crossing racial boundaries has. The Werewolves soon head out to fight the Vampires because of the situation.
This part of the film has its heart in the right place, dwelling on the theme of harmony among people, er, beings. I was struck with how similar this theme is to that in The Host, in which same author, Stephanie Meyers, deals with the same issue through a war between humans and Souls. And she resolves that war by the merging of the two groups in flesh. Here in Twilight, the tension is between Vampires and Werewolves, and Jacob’s imprinting on the child points to some reconciliation there. If I watch Part 2, I’ll be interested to see how that goes.
But I got very tired of another point in this film--its persistent, smack-in-the-face, anti-abortion message. It reminds me of the abstention message of Eclipse, and it strikes me as a pity that both films make such strident and irresponsible points to the target audience of young girls.
I hope that Part 2 manages to be more of a film than a wedding fantasy followed by preaching.
