Directed by Bill Condon. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner.

One wonders if it’s even worth writing a review considering millions of rabid fans will still watch this film. More soap opera than thriller/fantasy movie, Breaking Dawn Part 1 is a relatively dull set up to the grand finale, which will give us critics another chance to bitch about this apocryphal series.

Women will just love the first half of Breaking Dawn Part 1. It’s wedding time ladies and don’t we just love that. Well the boys don’t but you’re sure to fulfill some of your juvenile fantasies with this one. Ooooohhh, Robert Pattinson is so good looking! If you like guys with weird eyes, clown faces and spindly bodies, sure… And then there’s dialogue like: “No amount of time with you will be enough, but let’s start with forever.” Barff… but then you ladies thrive on that drivel so it’s a wet dream for you. Then there’s the extended honeymoon. Idyllic island, beautiful secluded beach-front property. Zzzzzzz… but then the women in the audience will find something, like Bella’s lingerie, or lipstick, or shoes to talk about.

Eighteen-year-old Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) doesn’t want to be changed into a vampire (so that she can have rough sex with Vampy hubby Edward Cullen played by Pattinson) just yet. So they have to be careful while fooling around but she still ends up getting bruised and oh-so-soft Eddie can’t take seeing her in pain so he must abstain. Why the hell did she marry him if she didn’t want to become a vampire? And what on earth is so ravishing about her that two guys (Edward and Jacob ‘werewolf’ Black played by Taylor ‘shirtless’ Lautner) are after her blood, so to speak?

Before you know it Bella is knocked up (they did it once, remember) and several months pregnant in a matter of days. The demon child – why they label it a demon child, I do not know – is a threat to Bella’s health and must be destroyed. But maternal feelings won’t allow her to do that. And so the family Cullen and Jacob must protect her, from the child and from the werewolf pack lead by Sam (Chaske Spencer) who view Bella’s ‘evil’ unborn offspring as a threat to them all.

The wolves are back, all the tacky CGI too. It looks like a badly animated film when they’re around. The action scenes between the vamps and wolves are horrible. And vampire venom!? They’re not snakes! Since when could vampires climb trees? Another reason for hating this series for me.

Anyway at least by the end there is some drama but nothing you couldn’t have predicted.