Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Directed by: Bill Condon (“Kinsey,”)
Written by:  Melissa Rosenberg (“The Twilight Saga: New Moon”)

If you’re like me, a male in his early thirties, your introduction to the “Twilight” series of books  came by way of a wife or girlfriend who became utterly obsessed with them, swooning over the overlong tales of Bella Swan, the unremarkable teenage girl everyone loves for some reason, and her romance with Edward Cullen, the handsome, eternally-teenaged vampire who falls madly in love with her, again for reasons unknown, and the love triangle it creates when Native American werewolf Jacob Black also falls in love with Bella because, hey, why not?

If your significant other was anything like my ex-girlfriend, she was so taken with these crappy novels written for teenage girls that she started to buy into the idea of epic romance and glared at you with disgust because yeah, maybe you did practical stuff for her like scrape the ice off her windshield on cold mornings, but you weren’t punching werewolves in the face to save her life like Edward was. Never mind the fact that she was damn near 30 years old, she wanted some chiseled, dangerous, sparkly-skinned creature of fantasy to profess his undying love for her, not some regular guy with oily skin.

As far as the “Twilight” movies go, the filmmakers have so far done little to attract people who weren’t already pre-disposed to liking the books (read: men).  Stocked with attractive-yet-terrible “actors” and peppered with crummy special effects, the films deviated little from the novels, content with just puking the prose onto the screen with little regard for how stupid much of it looked and sounded when performed by real human beings. Sure, the fans of the book series ate them up, making them huge hits at the box office, but none of the films have actually been any good. But at least they weren’t as skull-crushingly terrible as “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1” is.

The movie opens with the cast preparing for the wedding of human teenager Bella (Kristen Stewart) to dashing vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson). Of course this angers Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who hilariously rips his shirt off in a rage during a rainstorm after hurling the wedding invitation to the ground. After he phases into a werewolf and runs away 15 seconds into the movie, everything grinds to a halt. In what is clearly an effort to make people pay to see another whole film next year, the decision was made to divide the final book of the series into two movies. The result is a movie that moves so slowly it threatens to go back in time.

Director Bill Condon (“Kinsey,” “Dreamgirls”) fills the first hour of the movie with narrative molasses like an interminable wedding scene that feels like it takes place in real time and a honeymoon scene that features our main characters playing chess, whereas the second hour ramps up the insanity while still moving at a snail’s pace. It’s tough to accomplish, but “Breaking Dawn Part 1” manages to make truly crazy things like life-sucking demon fetuses, arguing wolves (!),  and vampire C-sections completely and totally boring.

The title of the movie is a threat. Consider the phrase “Part 1” to be a dire warning that “Part 2” is coming.