Monday, November 28, 2011

Drained by a Vampire Movie

I went to see Breaking Dawn Part I this weekend. I didn’t particularly care to, but a certain friend of mine loves the novels on which this movie is based, so I went with her. I enjoyed three things about the experience: the company of my friend, the chance to have a meal while sitting in the theater (we went to one of those theaters with table service), and the fact that I didn’t pay a thing for the movie ticket (through the clever use of rebate money). The movie itself was ridiculous.
I understood before going in that I was to see a long tableau of wedding arrangements, shots of “the dress,” the wedding itself, exotic location shots on the honeymoon, and an odd pregnancy and birth. (I thought that the plot would hold a few more key points than this, but alas, I was woefully wrong.) I thought that this movie was akin to looking at a mild acquaintance’s wedding album – the pictures are lovely, but I don’t know any of these people and I wasn’t there. I therefore have no real interest.
Besides that, I found some oddities in the movie that I couldn’t swallow. I can buy the idea that there is a family of Native Americans in this movie who can turn into wolves. But I can’t believe that this Native American wolf family has bred an Asian boy. One of the brothers in the pack looks clearly Asian. As an actor, he was competent, but he did not visually fit in.
There is also a scene in which the wolf pack gets together in wolf form to discuss the heroine, whose pregnancy, association by marriage to the vampire clan, and seemingly very existence seems to threaten them. I can’t fathom why. What’s it to them? Supposedly only one of them is in love with her, and that’s his personal problem. Anyway, they have this discussion in ominous, booming, echoing out-of-body dialogue, since wolves can’t actually speak in human. I guess the audience is meant to believe that we are listening in to their thoughts. It was ridiculous and cheesy, like a bad animated special.
The best part of the movie came when a little blood and gore showed up on the screen. And I do mean a little. For a vampire movie, this one was amazingly clean. (Maybe I should stop calling it a vampire movie and call it what it is: a preteen fantasy romance.) Anyway, whenever the spots of blood showed up, a long row of teen or preteen girls in the front of the theater regaled the audience with an outburst of “ewwwww!!!” This was even more amusing than the wolf telepathy scene.
Please don’t get me started on the social and feminist aspects of this movie and the books. I’m going to look at it strictly as entertainment. Sadly, as entertainment, it wasn’t terribly entertaining.

2 comments:

  1. The movie would've made more sense if you had read the books. I devoured all of them like the initially yummy empty calories that they are. Once you stop and go back, however, you find that all the criticisms are spot-on. My interest in this franchise is seriously waning and I thought this movie was the weakest of them all. However a group of us from work make plans to go for every premiere and we already have Part II on the calendar for next November which is half the fun of it.

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  2. Thanks, Shannon, you have a point -- I'm sure I would have understood it more and been much more engaged if I had read the book. I only read the first book in the series and wasn't interested enough to read more. However, did the filmmakers really make this film only for readers?

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