PCP in Theaters - Breaking Dawn Part 2

So my wife and I had a chance for a nice date night recently, and we went out with friends of ours to go see the latest in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn Part 2.  We caught it at the Hollywood Palms theater in Naperville, IL, which I highly recommend as a pretty cool place to catch a flick.  One of the actors from the film, Peter Facinelli (aka Carlisle Cullen), was in the house signing autographs and taking pictures with fans for $20 (something that theater does often, they had Tom "Draco Malfoy" Felton there for the premiere of the final Harry Potter movie).  Our friend Laine took a picture with him, but I chose to pass on shelling out the $20 for that.

Anyways, the Twilight saga has finally come to an end, so on with my review.

The Twilight Saga:  Breaking Dawn Part 2.  2012, rated PG-13.  My rating:  7.5 out of 10.

Just like I said in my review of Breaking Dawn Part 1(scroll down after the review of Mission Impossible 4), the film here feels like half of a movie.  Part 1 was the love story aspect of the book adaptation, and this one was the more fast-paced action half of the book.  Back is all of the cast from the prior films with their wooden acting skills still in place.

The film picks up right where the prior left off, with Kristen Stewart's Bella now a vampire.  The director attempts to show us how she perceives things now by showing a lot of extreme detail zoom shots, so we know just how more advanced her senses are now.  It gets old pretty quick, but thankfully it also gets abandoned pretty rapidly as well.  Also annoying in the early part of the film is the awful CGI for the half human half vampire child Renesmee (and for the record that name is stupid).  Because her character is growing up at a hyper-accelerated rate (and has a mental development well past where she should for her age), it doesn't make sense to use a series of real babies, but I honestly wish they had, or at least spent a few more bucks on the effects because the CGI is really horrible.  Every time that baby was on the screen it just pulled me right out of the scene.

Read the rest of the review after the jump --->


The best part of the middle section of the film is the Cullen's gathering their vampire allies to counter the threat from the vampire nobles, the Volturi.  We meet some pretty funny characters, people that if they had their own spin off movie, it would probably be better than anything else from the Twilight series thus far.  Most memorable is Garrett, a fight-loving rogue that has been fighting in every American war since the Revolution.  He steals every scene he is in, but that is because he is so much more vibrant and alive than any of the wooden Cullens.

Finally, we reach the end of the film, and get a payoff of an ending that is very satisfying for the audience.  The fight scene is epic in scope, with every major character getting their chance to shine (and in many cases to suffer, to the audience's cheers if they are villains).  Compared to the book, the film's fight sequence is far more detailed and fleshed out, probably because the way it was depicted in the book would have been significantly more boring on the screen than what they chose to show us.  Of all the fight sequences in all of the Twilight films, this one was hands down the best (not that that's saying much) but at least the series goes out with a bang.

Overall, this film was easily the most enjoyable for me out of any of the films in the series.  But as I said in my review of the last one, it's a Twilight movie.  If you like Twilight, you'll like this film.  If you don't, you probably won't.  By Twilight's standards, this is the most enjoyable in the series.  But how much of my enjoyment came from the fact that I'll never have to be dragged to a Twilight film again?  I'm not sure, but probably more than a little bit.

Trailer Hitch:  There were only three trailers on the film, which surprised me because I was expecting more.    At least all three of them were trailers that I had not yet viewed, so that was a plus.

Warm Bodies is a zombie love story coming in early 2013.  It looks like it could be very funny, and it has a few good people I enjoy seeing in films involved, plus I love zombies, so this is now something I want to see.  Bonus, it comes out right in time for Valentine's Day - 2/1/13.

Catching Fire is the next film in the Hunger Games franchise.  Here it is just a teaser with a logo, not one bit of new footage, so that was disappointing.  The film is set to release 11/23/13.

Now You See Me is a hybrid heist/magic flick coming out soon.  The film teams up Jessie Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson again, who were awesome together in Zombieland, and the film looked very interesting.  Also starring are Morgan Freeman, Mark Ruffalo, Isla Fisher, & Michael Caine, so the cast is outstanding. I can't wait to see this one as well.  It is currently slated for a 6/7/13 release.