Today Mom and I went to go see "Breaking Dawn." I'm giving my review with as much detail as possible (or as much as I can remember), so if you don't want any spoilers, just skip this. If you don't care either way, keep reading.
My first impression was that it was fast-paced, but not quite rushed, at the same time. And, if you are not into Twilight, you will not get this. Let's just get that straight right now.
The wedding scenes were very good. It wasn't just a wedding straight through. It was cut nicely. Bella's dress was beautiful. Yes, I was honestly starting to tear up. (Mom was like, "Are you crying?") The speeches were funny, and fit the characters giving them (honestly, they could have done without Jessica's). The honeymoon was okay; not as flashback-needy as I thought it was going to be.
The Twi-nostalgia is still here. If you listen very carefully to the music, you'll notice "Bella's Lullaby" is woven through the whole film. During the wedding you see flashbacks from the other films.
There were some very slight plot changes from the book, which worked out okay by adequately tying ends up. Irina, one of the Cullens' "cousins" is still mad at them for the wolves killing her friend (this takes place in New Moon, and *should* be explained in pt. 2). This was actually pretty plausible. (In the book Irina completely skips the wedding.) The filmmakers also switch around some of the wolves' story elements. This still works in favor for the movie. The wolves' voice-over sequence was kept very short, so this was one time where the editing worked in the film's favor. One scene that actually was really cool was the nightmare sequence, which was altered from the book. But it still gets the point across, and visually it stands out the most. Really well done.
(I still wish they'd included Rosalie's "dog food" sequence. Oh well. We wait for the DVD.)
The birthing scene was more graphic than I thought it would be. At one point I was like, ewww. From interviews I had seen of the actors discussing this scene, it seemed to me like the effects weren't going to be that good (in terns of the baby), but they were.
Imprinting- Just. Perfect. Exactly how I thought it was going to be. Maybe someone read my comment somewhere.
The ending- It was also perfect- just what we wanted. (It's another light-filled scene.) I was like, yay! The thing Mom and I both agreed on was that it left us wanting to see part 2. In two or three weeks we'd like to go see it again to get stuff that we might have missed.
The parts that I'd hoped would be good, were good. I wish they'd slowed down just a smidge, but it would have been worse if the movie dragged on. All in all, I'd give it a B+.
