You can pretty much just send me that Husband of the Year trophy. No, it’s not for taking out the garbage, or cleaning the litter box of a cat I neither wanted nor like, nor even the lavishly expensive birthday gift. I should win Husband of the Year for escorting my wife to Breaking Dawn: Part I.
And judging by the lack of other wedded males in the movie theater, I may just take home the crown. Yeah, I know you’re shocked: The show was probably 97% female. Hell, the female to male ratio was lower for the damn Lilith Fair. There were more men on the East German women’s swim team than sitting in plush movie theater seats for the 10 a.m. showing.
Even so, I didn’t feel so bad because there was some dude – chubby, bespectacled, aloof – who actually had the balls (or lack thereof?) to attend the show BY HIMSELF. At least I managed to score some brownie points with the little lady and earn my Husband of the Year nomination.
So let’s talk about this movie. Think of the worst movie you’ve ever seen. Then magnify it by 10 or so. For example: The movie wasn’t even 10 seconds old before fans of Team Jacob were moistened because the team’s namesake had forsaken his shirt. Just ripped that bad boy right off and started running. That level of shirtless abandon hasn’t been seen since Ronnie from Jersey Shore was frolicking around Italy bare-chested and loving it.
And acting. My god. I think when I played Prince Charming in second grade I was more believable. You rarely see overacting this bad outside of a Vlade Divac flop. Or a porno. Now that I think about it, it was like if Vlade played the lead role in “Vlade Does Croatia.”
And let’s not forget the beating the English language took. Apparently, words in vampire-and-werewolf universes only have one syllable. And the pauses between saying those words must be at least 4.2 seconds. But no more than 5 to 6 words per sentence please. Vampires may be able to leap 20 foot canyons in a single bound and run faster than a cheetah on crack laced with Red Bull, but apparently all that physical prowess stunts their capacity to understand polysyllabic words. And slows their speech pattern to a crawl.
So they at least had good special effects right? Holy shit, no. The CGI werewolves were terrible. Hell, Michael J Fox in Teen Wolf was a more believable werewolf. Of course, he gets bonus points for having a Chris Paul-esque ankle-breaking crossover. All the Breaking Dawn werewolves had were annoying voices and terrible howls. And lots of menacing, saliva dripping teeth.
And let’s not even talk about the plot. Or maybe we should. So Bella (the main character played by a stonefaced – and later anorexic – Kristin Stewart) saved herself for marriage. Way to go kiddo. Only problem: As we found out at her wedding ceremony when Jacob (wearing a shirt, no less! Classy dude!) threw a hissy fit, vampires can’t have relations with regular folk because they’re too strong and just mash ‘em to death. “You’re going to kill her!!!!!” Seriously screenwriter? Your conflict is the potential for death by vampire sex? My lord.
Well, lucky for Bella, the randy vampire didn’t kill her. You know, because he loved her so much he didn’t let his baser self take over and destroy her. Talk about self-control. But he did forget his rubber and impregnated her with a blood thirsty vampire. That slowly sucked the life out of her.
And that setup the rest of the movie as vampires and werewolves did their best to kill and/or save said demon spawn. So, yeah, it was pretty much downhill from there.
The most disheartening thing about the whole affair? The audience loved it. Like they laughed out loud multiple times. It was like a laugh track on a terribly unfunny sitcom. Except completely unlike that because it was real. And the worst part? These folks actually clapped – put their tiny little hands together, mind you – at the end of the movie. Like they enjoyed it or something.
It was at that moment I knew I was getting old. The only reason I would have been clapping was a joyful clap knowing the damn thing was over. I mean really, people don’t actually enjoy that movie, do they?
OK, I admit it. I enjoyed the whole damn experience. It was like a five car pile up: Bloody, terrible, disturbing. Yet, I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. It’s like when persecuted groups take a derogatory term (queer, nigger), use it, and turn it on its head. In other words, the movie was so damn bad, it was actually enjoyable to watch.
<Starts Slow Clap>