[Adrian]

In my continuing quest to say terrible and inappropriate things about awful films, I have watched the first part of Breaking Dawn. And oh my gosh, it is awful.

As always, let's start with the good. Alice and Bella are rather hot.

The Cullen's house looks really cool. I'd take it if someone gave it to me.

And Bella's dad is his usual, earnest self, giving a wedding toast where he threatens to bury Edward deep if he harms Bella. This is all well and good, seeing a somewhat normal father figure, but the scene is played for mockery rather than showing a nice protective male figure. So that good part kinda goes out the window.

For what it's worth, Taylor Lautner plays Jacob as well as can be expected, given the atrocious material he finds himself handed. Full of barely repressed rage, he stalks about making heroic proclamations and generally acting the opposite of Pattinson. Seriously though, Pattinson plays his part (or does he?) so limp-wristedly, Richard Simmons could pull off Jacob's manliness...WHILE wearing silver shorts. I get the feeling that Jacob actually cares about Bella. This is one werewolf who's done being dragged around by the genita-whoops, I mean leash...he sees that's come in second and now all he wants to do is protect her. That's courage and manliness right there, something missing from the rest of the movie.

Let's move onto the bad. There's a lot of it to cover.

The writing is bad. I've read better dialogue smeared on public restroom walls, and sneezed up better characters.

I'm back to thinking Robert Pattison is gay. Gayer than Justin Beiber dueting with Elton John on "Don't Let Your Son Go Down On Me" while riding a pink unicycle with him. He never once displays a male impulse, never once has a masculine moment, never once does anything other than sulk and snivel and try to resist his wife's sexual advances. Sorry dude, you're so deep in the closet, you're finding Christmas presents. He manages to tolerate the latter duty only by biting a pillow, which Bella learns of when waking and it looks like someone took a baseball bat to a pinata full of doves in their room. The whole honeymoon part is beyond cringeworthy. I...I...I can't go on, not and be decent about it. The fact that this is considered romantic and not horrific comedy makes my brain hurt and disappoints me severely.

Don't get me started on the mechanics of vampires fathering children. We'll overlook the medically nonsensical notion that this is possible. It ain't, and anyone with an IQ taller than Gary Coleman meditating in the lotus position can see that. Ok, taller doesn't really make sense there, but I wanted to use that joke.

The main plot point, or should I say angst-inspiring-event of the film has shifted from "which horrifically destructive monster will steal Bella's heart for all eternity" to "will her demon spawn gank her, and how long will a creature that's supposed to be an unstoppable badass of fiction mope about it?" Bella's medical impossibility is destroying her from the inside out, and this gives the plot a chance to run wild showing Bella looking just as drawn and pasty and hollow on the outside as her character is on the inside. Will she keep it? Will they find a way to kill it? Of course, this being a typical girl's fantasy story, everything works out for the absolute best, even being transformed into the walking dead. There are no consequences, no one pays any price for bad decisions.

I'd shift gears and talk about how awful the minor plot device of Jacob's little revolution in the wolfpack is, but quite honestly, there's nothing to say. It's so terribly developed, both in CGI and dialogue, it seems like something that would appear on a PBS Saturday morning kids show. I nearly quit watching during the lumberyard scene, but kept watching only because I was hoping we'd see Alice again, this time in a state of undress. I was severely disappointed.

Let's shift gears for real and talk about blood. There's a little of it here, and that kind of mollifies me. But seriously...you can't bite a guy in the neck, drink his blood, and not get any of that blood anywhere. Not possible. Later on, Edward The Fabulouth (you have to say this in a high, surprised voice and flutter your hands and eyelashes at the same time) gives Bella a C-section with his fangs. Again very little blood. You rip into a person's abdomen with your teeth, there's spraying and leaking and gushing and jetting and all sorts of unpleasant shit that tends to turn the surrounding area a very dark shade of crimson. Nope, not here. Just like people not bleeding when they get shot on CBS cop shows, I can't stand when film doesn't respect my intelligence like this. Never mind that HE JUST CHEWED OPEN HIS WIFE'S STOMACH OH MY GOD WHY IS THIS BEING PRESENTED IN A FILM DESIGNED FOR GIRLS IN THE 10-16 AGE RANGE?!?!?!

I could go on. But I won't. It saddens me that this level of idiocy and derangement is presented as romantic and desirable for female minds at an impressionable age. We're gonna have (and are actually starting to have) women with some really frakked up notions of the world, given the prevalence of this crap pervading entertainment. That's taking the series as a whole. At least in this movie we saw only slight mocking of masculinity and traditional values, which were canceled out by Jacob's poorly written attempt at nobility. The worst thing I saw in this movie was the presentation of wimpy, at-the-best metrosexual men as romantic and dream and perfect and absolutely fabulouth! Combined with the rest of the series though...I lose hope. This one mostly just sucked, it didn't offend me on quite as primal a level as the last one. This movie killed more of my brain cells than I have on a bad night with a bottle of Sailor Jerry rum.

Adrian