The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

HERE’S SOME BAD news for the angry teenage boys who boss the internet

Directed by Bill Condon. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning 12A cert, general release, 115 min

HERE’S SOME BAD news for the angry teenage boys who boss the internet. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga has finally ground to a satisfactory halt, and now they’ll all have to go and find something else to gripe about.

There are, it should be acknowledged, things worth sniffing at in the last episode. Gathering together a cast of racially stereotyped eternals from about the planet – an undead It’s a Small World – Bella and her pals happen upon a trio of Irish vampires who raise the unintentional comedy to a near unbearable pitch. Watch out, Voluturi! It’s Mrs Brown, Derby McGill and the least popular female Corr.

That noted, Breaking Dawn – Part 2 offers a very efficient, mildly touching, morally unimpeachable conclusion to a chronicle that has left an indelible impact on contemporary popular culture.

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True, the animated wolves are still laughably inorganic. It remains a source of regret that the producers ditched the first film’s funky tone and embraced a more bombastic, wipe-clean aesthetic. Taylor Lautner is cheesier than a Wisconsin wedding banquet. But the relationship between Bella (sulktastic Kristen Stewart) and Edward (posh totty Robert Pattinson) has developed into a rather beautiful take on the pressures of growing up while in love.

You will, most likely, either already know the plot or make a great palaver of not caring one way or the other. Having finally chosen Team Beatnik over Team Lunkhead, Bella is now attempting to cope with her spooky baby and her status as a fully fledged vampire. Over the course of a meandering plot (the decision to slice the last novel in two shows through) she and her gang prepare for a battle with Michael Sheen’s New Romantic cabal.

The final showdown features a defiantly moral twist that may win over midwestern fundamentalist book-burners, but will almost certainly harden web-based gripers in their contention that the series is “silly girl’s stuff”.

Go to your rooms and play with your Xboxes. Nobody’s listening.

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke, a contributor to The Irish Times, is Chief Film Correspondent and a regular columnist