Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (12A)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson

Anthony Quinn
Friday 18 November 2011 01:00 GMT
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Breaking Waters, more like, given the big event in this first part of the Twilight saga's conclusion.

Bella and Edward (played by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson) have no sooner plighted their troth and flown down to Rio for the honeymoon than the lady finds herself – duh-der! – pregnant. This is progress, I suppose, after the tremulous agonies of restraint in the previous couple of movies. The oddest thing is that after the longest heavy-petting in cinema, the honeymoon night – when virginal Bella finally gets what she wants from vampire Edward – is the dampest fizzle conceivable.

Their luxe beach-house hideaway the next morning looks like a tornado blew through it, yet we see hardly a bare bum the whole time. Mind you, their nuptials didn't exactly set the pulse racing, either: the worst wedding speeches ever followed by werewolf supersulk Jacob (Taylor Lautner) doing his tiresome shoulda-been-me routine and dashing back into the forest for a good old howl. When Bella returns home pregnant, Jacob takes one look at her ominous bump and yells at Edward, "You did this!" (Somebody call Mensa – there's a new candidate in town). As her delicate condition worsens – Kristen Stewart is by now shading towards translucence – a snarling stand-off ensues between wolves and vampires, though don't expect any great thrills and spills. The pacing of this saga has virtually limped to a standstill. Melissa Rosenberg's clunking script prompted gales of derision when I saw it, the highlight being Bella's decision on a name if her child is a girl. She intends to combine the names of her mother and mother-in-law, Rene and Esme, making her considered choice... Renesme. That's right – Renesme. But you could argue that it's no more absurd than anything else in this interminably mopey saga.

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