The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Reviews
Top CriticA feast of ripe dialogue and bloodsucking action.
The fifth and final entry in the historically successful "Twilight" franchise is the most self-aware and in some ways the most entertaining.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
If anything, this series has gotten dumber and more inert as it has progressed, with this last one finally reaching over into an extended wallow in camp.
I'll probably never understand the popularity of the Twilight movies. They're haphazardly assembled adaptations of awful books.
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| Original Score: 2/4
You're going to hear a lot about Breaking Dawn Part 2 being the best of the Twilight movies. That's like saying a simple head cold is preferable to swine flu.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The 'Twilight Saga' has no upmarket aspirations. Seeking neither critical applause or peer-review awards, these movies, like those of Tyler Perry, seek only to provide unabashed satisfaction to those who believe in their characters.
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| Original Score: 2/5
A riotous showdown ... finds an absurdly ingenious way both to preserve and subvert the contentiously passive climax of Meyer's novel.
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| Original Score: 3/5
It's a movie so dull you might start yanking on your own head after about an hour.
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| Original Score: 1/4
After the laborious exposition of "Part 1," "Part 2" is able to reap the benefits, tying together some disparate threads and providing real action at the end.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The very title Breaking Dawn, Part 2 hints at what the movie, sadly, reveals to be the case: The Twilight franchise has overstayed its welcome.
The first "Twilight" film that could get non-fans' hearts pumping turns out to be the last.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Fans of the series, which has made more than $2 billion worldwide, will no doubt find it all terribly romantic and deeply meaningful. The rest of humanity will remain unmoved.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Despite the slow start Mr. Condon closes the series in fine, smooth style. He gives fans all the lovely flowers, conditioned hair and lightly erotic, dreamy kisses they deserve.
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| Original Score: 3/5
While parting involved no sorrow, it was sweeter than expected.
As billion-dollar Hollywood franchises go, this is one of the drawn-out dumbest. The stake through the heart comes not a moment too soon.
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| Original Score: 2/5
"Breaking Dawn, Part 2" doesn't end the series on an especially strong note, but it ends it. Let's count our blessings.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Full of pauses and intense looks and vague standing around ...
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| Original Score: 2/4
It's about as exciting as watching David Blaine play Stratego and makes you miss the power of the first four films all the more: the uncontainable yearning of the Bella-Edward-Jacob triangle.
With so many scenes of well-dressed vampires sitting or standing, stiffly, while Taylor Lautner or Robert Pattinson or Kristen Stewart passes another micro-slab of dialogue like a kidney stone, [Sheen's] overacting's greatly appreciated, thanks.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
It made me realize that, as narratively lumpy as they can be, I like the Twilight films because they're really about the eternal movie romance of vampires at play.
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| Original Score: B
While "Breaking Dawn - Part 1" was zany enough...to almost work as a stand-alone, "Part 2" relies on mad rushes of exposition to explain exactly what's at stake here.
Easily the trippiest and goofiest of the five addled adolescent vampire romances based on the Stephenie Meyer books ...
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
As for you, dear reader, the symptoms of our long national nightmare should begin to fade as you're heading out of the theater, dissipating by the time you clear the concession stand.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Breaking Dawn - Part 2, the fifth and concluding chapter of the young vampire romance franchise, manages to find a pulse as it profitably clicks the turnstiles one last time.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Good riddance "Twilight," may it be an eternity before you're relaunched or rebooted.
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| Original Score: D+
This fifth and mercifully final installment features so much idle anticipation that it's unclear whether we're watching a movie or an Apple product launch.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Rather than repeat past mistakes by handling author Stephenie Meyer's supernatural love story with kid gloves, this "Twilight" cuts loose and is as playful as a puppy.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The dialogue remains spotty and sappy, the effects still haven't caught up to modern-day standards, but "Twilight's" popularity is such that even when it falls short, it doesn't seem to matter.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Finally, someone took the source material at its terribly written word and stopped treating the whole affair so seriously.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg aren't afraid to play fast and loose with Meyer's story, and that's a good thing. You just wish they'd done it more often.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
"Breaking Dawn, Part 2" expands with a full intensity of force, stronger and more epic than the films that led to this impactful finale.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
I must admit if you're going to bring the series to a close, "Part 2" does it about as well as it can be done.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Tellingly, it's when Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg veer away from Stephenie Meyer's turgid text that Breaking Dawn, Part 2 actually comes to life and turns into something bold and outrageous.
Finally -- finally! -- the Twilight franchise embraces its own innate absurdity with the gleefully over-the-top conclusion, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2.
The final installment of the immortal Bella/Edward romance will give its breathlessly awaiting international audience just what it wants.
This second of two Bill Condon-directed installments clears a low bar to stand easily as the franchise's most eventful and exciting entry.
