The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2

Rated PG-13

Grade C-

 BY MICHAEL WALTERS

THE CANTANKEROUS CRITIC

There’s good news for the boyfriends and significant others wearing pained smiles as they are dragged to the cinemaplex – and to their doom — by the Twi-Hards in their lives.

“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2” isn’t the worst entry in the series. But the superlatives stop there for this toothless finale to a series that can’t find a way to not suck.

“Breaking Dawn Part 2” picks up right where “Breaking Dawn Part 1” left off.  Kristen Stewart’s Bella is now a vampire with a creepy half-vampire child, but her acting has failed to improve. In early scenes with the clearly CGI’d baby Stewart seems just as lost as the special-effects team as to how to properly display any emotion beyond slouching ennui.

Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson’s Edward still seems like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone, and Taylor Lautner takes off his shirt in ridiculously exploitative fashion.

The film is poorly written and poorly acted in ways you can’t blame entirely on the woebegone source material. The series continues to have some of the cheesiest and cheap-looking effects of any major blockbuster. When Edward is teaching Bella to tame her newfound blood thirst, at times it looks like the actors are running in place in front of a cut-rate green screen.

Things pick up a little once the Volturi get involved.  They’re led by Michael Sheen in a delightfully hammy performance. He alone seems able to rise above the fray and escape this series’ enduring stain.   The Volturi mistakenly believe Bella and Edward’s offspring is a so-called “immortal child” and aim to stamp it out and the rest of Bella and Edward’s Cullen clan.

But before they meet up for their snow-packed finale, we’re forced to suffer through lots and lots of  dreamy staring and some unintentionally hilarious dialogue that’s not quite funny enough to take away the boredom.  Even when the movie tries to put on an epic battle scene, more often than not it boils down to characters glaring at each other in what can only be termed an expensively filmed staring contest.

The film contains a surprising number of decapitations, but then oddly chickens out at the end.  But then again, that’s what the “Twilight” series has always done.  The film makers always promised the idea of entertainment while failing to deliver anything beyond endless moping.