The story jumps straight into the wedding preparation leading quickly onto the the wedding itself where we finally see Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) tie the knot. Werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) turns up and seems to have finally come to turns with Bella's fate: of becoming a vampire. Then Bella and Edward shoot off to their honeymoon to finally consummate their marriage in a very PG/M rated, yet satisfying sex scene.
Of course when dealing with vampire and human sex, who worries about protection? Well our two leads don't and soon Bella is vomiting from morning sickness. The cross vamp/human baby inside of Bella appears to grow at an alarmingly fast rate and drains the life out of the mother. But Bella wants to keep the baby, even if it kills her.
Jacob learns of the child and the werewolf pack in fear of the unknown decide to kill the unborn child and in turn kill Bella. However Jacob pulls apart from the pact and joins forces with the Cullen Vamps to protect Bella at any cost.
This film is exactly what we have come to expect from the series, a shamelessly romantic/borderline melodramatic cinema experience. There are some beautiful moments in the film and because it has been split into two it doesn't have to rush through the developments and explain everything with dialogue, but instead it contains some more action driven scenes. The wedding reception speeches are genuinely funny and had the entire audience laughing, while the film also wasn't afraid to poke fun at itself when talking about possible baby names. There are some intense moments as well and are handled well from the director (Bill Condon) and cast. Kristen Stewart looks amazingly disgusting during the pregnancy and is skinner than any bulimic runway model. The eventual child birth itself is also one of the emotional highlights of the film. But for me, I absolutely loved how they brought to life a certain transformation scene. (There was of course the amazing forest wedding-but with a very awkward cameo).
The screenplay closely follows the original source, which unfortunately is its downfall. The novels rely so much on sense of smell and reading people's minds, among other powers, however this is something that the film series has never been good at conveying (though in this film they attempt to). So unfortunately the film still has a lot of exposition and cheesy dialogue to make sense of what is happening. The final climax builds up wonderfully (though the lighting is terrible) but is destroyed by exposition.
Thankfully the film does have Kristen Stewart to help ground the dialogue meanwhile the on/off screen romance with RPatz results in an electrifying chemistry between the pair. It is however Tay Tay that can't seem to pull off the melodrama, that and he pulled the short straw for fluffy dialogue.
The film is actually better than I thought it would be and at the end of the day (night) I thoroughly enjoyed myself, which is something I can't say for most of the other garbage Hollywood has released this year.
PS. Stay for the credits.
