Yes. I went to see Breaking Dawn Part 2. And believe it or not, it actually wasn’t terrible.

No. That’s a lie. It was still pretty terrible. But it’s by far and away the best of the Twilight movies and I have to admit *hides * _{I actually had a bit of fun seeing it.}

A few days ago, there’s no way that I would have guessed that I might actually have enjoyed this movie. Yes, I’ve read all four books and seen the previous four movies. But that’s mostly so that I can actually have a bit more of a leg to stand on when I critique them rather than just going off hearsay and rumor.(Although it turns out that pretty much all the worst of the hearsay is spot on. So it goes.)

But then there’s this one. The second half of a movie that really didn’t need two parts, they finally did something that I wish they’d done with the rest of the series. They finally let the screenwriter/director revel in just how delightfully cheesy these movies could be. It scores some definite points in the self-parody category. The fun starts right at the beginning when newly-vamped Bella flying tackles a puma. There are GIFs of that all over the Internet and for good reason.

There are also definitely some questionable moments. You have werewolf Jacob imprinting on the hyper-fast-growing newborn. They’re sure to point out in the movie that it’s ’not that way’ but then at the very end of the movie… It’s completely that way. At least she’s fully grown by then… Except that half-breeds such as herself apparently fully mature at the ripe old age of seven. Even if she mentally matures at the same rate she physically does, that’s still one heck of an age difference. Although come to think of it, there’s a hundred years between Bella and Edward, so I guess that’s not really a problem after all. :-\

Then there’s the wonder of ‘diversity’, with the good guys tracking down as many of their friends as they can with the idea that the crazy mass murdering vampire leader (which Michael Sheen did an awesome job of by the way) won’t just kill them all anyways. And it turns out that these friends just so happen to be the most perfect set of stereotypes that you could lay eyes on. Oh, and apparently they’re the vampire X-Men. Or something like that. At least it gave them a chance to play with some cool special effects.

Spoiler!

I think the best part of the movie has to be the part that’s not in the books at all.

I went to see the movie with my fiance, who is perhaps the best person in the world to go see surprising / horrifying things with–her reactions are priceless. So when suddenly things go sideways and everyone starts tearing each other’s heads off Barbie Doll style (pop), her jaw dropped. From various Internet commentary, I knew they were going to play the ‘it was a dream’ card all along (boo*!*), but she definitely didn’t. Pity that they had to end the movie with the same deus-ex-machina-man-we’ve-never-even-heard-of-before as the books, but at least for a little while there it actually got close to approaching something that resembled a pretty cool action scene.

/Spoiler!

Oh and one last thing: who’s bright idea was it to have two differently spaced fonts for the title sequence? They changed from one font in red to another in white and each and every single time, at least a few of the letters no longer lined up. Maybe they were going for some sort of ’look’ there, but if they were I think it fell flat. Not a good way to start out the movie.

Believe it or not, I’m actually going to put this about a quarter of the way up the list. It’s not a movie that I’ll ever see again, but I don’t actually feel like it was time wasted. There are certainly many better movies out there, but if for any reason you’re about to be forced to watch a Twilight movie make sure it’s this one.