REVIEW - THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 2

Just as Part 1 of the adaptation of the fourth book in Stephenie Meyer's series felt like half a movie, here comes the other half, and it too feels incomplete. Lurching into a story already in motion, the film spends over an hour fumbling through a plot that consists of one sole strain, which itself takes as thin a form as an encroaching threat. Said threat, the Volturi, rely on what menace they ascertained in previous installments in the franchise, and Melissa Rosenberg's typically cumbersome screenplay shuffles so often between scenes of (supposed) humour and (supposed) sexuality amid the stifled dramatic bluster that this threat has no space in which to build. Then, an apparently aimless movie launches into a bizarre finale that begins and ends so abruptly that, in the context of this film, it almost seems like I imagined it... As a final act in this saga, it may satisfy fans in singular need of just that - a fifth and final act, which easily explains Breaking Dawn Part 2's peculiar structure. But, if we're to judge it in relation to its predecessors, it ought to be noted that they all bore much stronger structures, and more purposeful narratives too - this one consists of little more than waiting for the baddies to arrive, then watching them leave; on a side note, why do they take so long to arrive? What about that super-fast movement they sometimes do? Or those massive jumps they're capable of? And where did Bella and Edward's new house come from? And who bothered decorating it? And quite why does their child age as many years as months she's been alive? And if you saw a man transform into a werewolf before your eyes, just how calm do you think you'd be? I'd have myself committed, but not Bella's father! Alas, perhaps I might find answers for these questions in Meyer's morally obsolete books. This film was not made for me, I guess, it was made for those who have already read the books, and know them much too well for their own good. I believe that a good film should appeal to everybody - I cannot get my head around the Twilight saga, and so it does not appeal to me.