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80The final installment of the immortal Bella/Edward romance will give its breathlessly awaiting international audience just what it wants.
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80Every frame of silent, lip-biting, pent-up tension in the series has been holding its breath for this -- a 600-minute soap opera suddenly exploding into a Grindhouse slasher.
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80Part 2 has the bonus of a livelier Stewart performance than fans have been accustomed to. No longer a mopey, lower-lip-biting emo girl, this Bella is twitchy, feral, formidable and fully energized, a goddess even among her exalted bloodsucker brethren.
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75Breaking Dawn - Part 2 starts off slow but gathers momentum, and that's because, with Bella and Edward united against the Volturi, the picture has a real threat.
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67No one joyfully embraces this absurdity better than Michael Sheen. The actor finds a ridiculous-yet-perfect way to deliver every single second of his performance as head of the global vampire council -- He's all over the film's finale. It's fantastic.
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63It's not a good film, but viewed from a cockeyed angle, it's a great guilty pleasure, and director Bill Condon is in on the joke.
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63Finally, someone took the source material at its terribly written word and stopped treating the whole affair so seriously.
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63Easily the trippiest and goofiest of the five addled adolescent vampire romances based on the Stephenie Meyer books.
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63Characters are better employed; emotions are, for once, palpable; and the selfishness of Bella, author Stephenie Meyer's avatar, is finally somewhat squelched.
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63I suspect its audience, which takes these films very seriously indeed, will drink deeply of its blood. The sensational closing sequence cannot be accused of leaving a single loophole, not even some those we didn't know were there.
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60By the time the great vampire showdown finally got started, I was good and done with Breaking Dawn, Part 2. But the big action scene is so campily over the top - with one twist so unforeseeable - that it sent me out on a burst of grudging goodwill.
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60Despite 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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Nov 15, 201260Bella's an empowered badass in this last installment, wielding newborn strength while showing unusual self-control and learning to use her new abilities - and that's why things feel off.
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60The 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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60And now, just as Bella Swan (Stewart) embraces her own eternal power, Breaking Dawn, Part 2 expands with a full intensity of force, stronger and more epic than the films that led to this impactful finale.
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60Fans will be left on a high; other viewers will be confused but generally entertained by a saga whose romance is matched only by its weirdness.
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50I'm not a religious man but, Hallelujah! I may not be done with Meyer but at least I'll never again have to cope with the angst, self-absorption, and vampire mythology mutilation that characterized these five movies.
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50It'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.
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50There may never have been a movie whose quality mattered less than this final chapter of The Twilight Saga.
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50It's Dead! It's Dead! By which I mean, It's Finished! It's Finished! Five movies have been squeezed out of four Stephenie Meyer Twilight books. All of them redefining cinematic tedium for a new century. And now, It's Over! It's Over! No more Twilight movies EVER! I'm so joyful that I might be overrating The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 by saying it's not half bad.
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50The franchise... concludes with a genuinely stirring ending. ... But [Stewart's] acting hasn't improved, and the dialogue remains laughable. Bad actress, bad lines. Bad combination.
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Nov 15, 201250Comes as close as the film series has gotten to reconciling the epic romance it's billed as and the self-aware camp-fest it often hints at wanting to be, but it's still a messy, unwieldy slab of film product that's targeted directly at fans of the book series, with little regard for anyone else.
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50This 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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40Kiddos: I'm sighing, too, but only from relief it's all behind us now.
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40As 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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40Between its farcical script, soulless relationships and waxwork performances, this is a final chapter that will please only the most devout fans. At least the bleeding wolves have stopped talking.
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40Part 2 really is a continuation of "Part 1," both from a story standpoint and from an artistic standpoint.
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40Despite all those fierce confrontations and tribal divisions, exhaustively rehearsed and mythologised, nobody's really a bad guy and nothing's really at stake.
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38Boasts one moment, perhaps three or four seconds in length, so delightfully intense and uncharacteristically juicy that the rest of the film - most of the rest of the whole series, in fact - looks pretty pale by comparison. Not vampire pale. Paler.
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38For those with no vested interest in this protracted and supernatural soap opera, but who do care about cinema, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2 will be, unsurprisingly, a silly and somewhat cheesily made waste of time.
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Nov 15, 201230If 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.