Twilight’s Breaking Dawn achieves hilarious levels of B-movie glory, whether intended or not
Teenagers sure as shit do make dumb decisions
- Andrew Cooper/© 2010 Summit Entertainment, LLC.
- PLEASED AS PUNCH: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart finally do the sex in Breaking Dawn
Bella Swan’s not dumb, she’s just a teenager. But teenagers sure as shit do make dumb decisions. And here’s the thing about being a teenage girl: You give boys too much credit. Like waaaaaaay too much credit. Like so much credit that you forgive them things your 30-year-old self wouldn’t be caught dead allowing. But that wouldn’t matter if you could stay 18 forever … right?
In the penultimate entry in the Twilight film series, Breaking Dawn — Part 1, 18-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) and 17-going-on-110-year-old vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) tie the knot in an elaborate, Midsummer Night’s Dream-y ceremony before the entire town. Bella, who always seemed more like the eloping type, looks justifiably terrified walking down the aisle as it rains white flower petals all around her. The young couple makes it official in a swirl of vows, the camera spinning around as they promise “to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live.”
It’s a scene Twihards have been dying to see for years now, an official, law-binding moment that somehow would seem to justify the fantasy that painful, possibly lethal love is nonetheless a girl’s most rewarding dream.
Yes, Twilight is painfully misogynistic. Yes, it’s full of mixed messages about sex and abuse and purity. But in Breaking Dawn, camp for once trumps earnestness to make this the franchise’s most watchable entry yet. In fact, Breaking Dawn achieves hilarious levels of B-movie glory, whether intended or not. It’s a teen romance grindhouse fantasy that pinballs between the kind of angsty dialogue and facial expressions that made The Room so bad it’s good, to special effects that are special in the way Rain Man is special.