Film: 'The Breaking Dawn Part 1'; Director: Bill Condon; Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner; Ratings: **
The reason why the 'Twilight' series captured our imagination a few years ago was the originality of its idea and execution. Watching the penultimate film in the series, you will be stuck with a series of deja vus.
You won't have to rake your head hard to figure out where you had seen bits and pieces of 'The Breaking Dawn' for it literally takes inspiration from and shamelessly copies the execution of almost every single TV soap-opera and their Indian avatar - the saas-bahu sagas.
Isabella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) finally get married and Edward unwittingly gets Isabella pregnant. As the fetus grows rapidly, it threatens Bella's life. But she is unwilling to abort the baby despite the urging of everyone around. Afraid of the half-human, half-vampire baby growing inside Bella, the wolves plan to kill her even as the Cullen family and Jacob (Taylor Lautner), fight to save her.
The only originality the film hold is in its combination of cliches of multiple genres. Thus you have an exotic woman in possession of an ancient wisdom (from the monster movie genre) calling Edward a monster. You have once again a jealous friend in Jacob who mouths cheesy lines (teenage romance genre) and you have a understanding and protective family speaking dialogues straight from soaps (family drama genre)...the list goes on.
It even begins with 'the' teenage cinematic marriage sequence of the millennium. As the jealous best fried Jacob runs off in anger, the couple is married in a dream marriage that even Prince Charles and Diana could not have dreamt of. This and the honeymoon is slow and long, but has enough oomph for girls with romance in their eyes to lap up.
There is no point commenting on the acting department which actually relies on the inability of its actors to act, and their abilities to look either pale and white, expressionless or perennially angry.
'The Breaking Dawn' is good only for the die-hard fans of the franchisee, or teenage girls with fairy tale romance lighting up their eyes or fans of Mills and Boons. Others beware of a headache.
