‘Time Begins to Crawl Backwards’: The 7 Harshest Critics’ Jabs at Breaking Dawn

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Summit Entertainment

Updated: There are 4 books in the Twilight series.

Critics understand that no amount of bad press will be able to suck the blood out of a blockbuster franchise like Twilight. But that didn’t stop them from trying. After all, producers have decided to break the final piece of the four-part series into two separate parts, elongating the suspense, the profits, and the excruciating time that viewers must spend watching Bella and Edward live out a trivial, soap opera-like existence.

(READ: TIME’s Breaking Dawn Review: More like Breaking Yawn)

So let the bad reviews flow. It won’t stop this film from bringing in big bucks from its devoted audience – it already clinched the third-best opening on record. But for critics, a chance to write a crushing review is a pithy though cathartic attempt to reclaim the lost hours reviewing a film that they’d be remiss in ignoring. Breaking Dawn currently stands at a pitiful 28% on movie rating site Rotten Tomatoes. Here are the seven harshest pans of the film:

  • “But a significant number of its 117 minutes do seem like hours, and whenever certain actors take the lead and set the pace of the dialogue, time itself begins to crawl backward and the breaking dawn begins to feel like yesterday’s breaking dawn, or last Tuesday’s.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
  • “By any normal standard, this is a terrible movie, with stilted dialogue and leaden pacing—every 15 minutes or so, the action stops for a musical montage involving slow-motion handsomeness. But the Twilight saga stopped being normal a long time ago.” – Dana Stevens, Slate

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  • “What we learn in this all-pain/no-pleasure episode is that marriage feels like a life sentence, weddings are miserable events, honeymoon sex is dangerous and leaves a bride covered in bruises, and pregnancy is a torment that leads to death in exchange for birth. Also, during pregnancy, families fight like werewolves and vampires. Way to go, [young adult] message.” – Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
  • Breaking Dawn is both overlong and understuffed. I lived a thousand lifetimes watching it, and died a thousand deaths. (The worst one was when Edward looked up “immortalicum” on Yahoo! search. On Yahoo! search!)” – Dan Kois, Village Voice
  • “Forget that the film is too long and not very exciting, that the dialogue is still as deadly as a vampire bite (sorry — the lame writing must be contagious) and that some of it is SPOKEN BY WOLVES.” –Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
  • Twilight is to real horror as cotton candy is to real food.  But only if the cotton candy is spun out of arsenic and crystal meth, because for the metaphor to be accurate, it needs to be something that is sickly sweet but genuine poison.”—Drew McWeeny, HitFix
  • The movie’s tagline states, “Forever is only the beginning …” After a few minutes of viewing this lifeless pap, we realize that it’s not a slogan at all. It’s a warning.” – Kimberly Gadette, Doddle

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