'AltFilmGuide' Talks About The First 'Breaking Dawn' Reviews

From source: AltFilmGuide
Below are three The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 review snippets — all pans — from major trade publications. After reading Todd McCarthy's take on the film in The Hollywood Reporter (see below), I believe it's clear that there'll be a Special R-rated version of Breaking Dawn on DVD/Blu-ray. According to McCarthy's description of the honeymoon, director Bill Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg may have wanted moviegoers to believe that babies are delivered — or at least genetically engineered — by storks. (Hence, all the feathers in the bedroom on Isle Esme?)

Summit Entertainment, which hasn't been at all lucky outside the Twilight Saga realm (e.g., The Beaver, Source Code, 50/50, Drive Angry, The Three Musketeers), gotta make a living, you know? It's like 20th Century Fox releasing and rereleasing James Cameron's Avatar on 2D, 3D, 4D DVD. But wait a sec, didn't Rosenberg and Condon promise there would be rocket-blasting sex scenes in Breaking Dawn? Jeez…

"… the happy couple jets off to Rio, which is so little seen it scarcely seems worth the trip. … They skinny dip at night to some incredibly insipid songs, they're very tender and understanding with each other, and then in the morning the bedroom is in total disarray; we never see anything of what came between, no moment of surrender, which is what the series has been building to all along. Where one legitimately hopes to register what Bella feels upon finally giving herself over to what she has so long desired but resisted, all we get are languid and lax interludes of what still seems like puppy love. Very lame, and very disappointing." Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter.

McCarthy adds the following: "After the energy and alertness evident in his previous work as helmer of Gods and Monsters, Kinsey, and Dreamgirls, it looks as though director Bill Condon fell into a trance while making this film — so dirgelike is the pacing, so banal is Melissa Rosenberg's dutiful script on a scene-by-scene, moment-to-moment basis."

"Director Bill Condon … forgoes much in the way of subtlety or tension, opting instead for programmatic obviousness. … This also means the performances in Breaking Dawn are largely soapy and melodramatic, especially from Lautner and to a lesser degree Pattinson. Many of the scenarios are dire, of course, but the acting style tilts toward manifestly expressive — inclusive of affected whispers, sneers and shouts — in theory to match the white-hot teen feeling of the conceit. … A more skilled adaptation could plumb this material for more worth; this movie barely scratches the surface." Brent Simon in Screen International.

"Bella Swan kisses abstinence and mortality goodbye in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, in which the vampire-loving teen gets hitched, knocked up and almost destroyed from within by her little bundle of joy. All the more disappointing, then, that a story so pregnant with dramatic possibilities should wind up feeling like such an unconsummated opportunity. Drawn from Stephenie Meyer's polarizing, weirdly compelling fourth novel, the film is rich in surface pleasures but lacks any palpable sense of darkness or danger, which is a roundabout way of saying that Summit has protected its investment well." Justin Chang in Variety.