I was up against it last night, y'all. Home with the kids all day, then a movie screening, and then up into the wee hours trying to write something for today's Pop Rocks.

Fortunately, the screening in question was for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1. Not because it was one of the best movies of the year and totally turned me around about the relative merits of the series, but rather because of the embargo.

See, movie critics may get to see films in advance, but most are expected to hold their reviews until opening day. This would seem like bad news for a content-starved entertainment blogger, except now I get to present my impressions -- not in verbal form, which would probably annoy publicists who are already on fed up with my insistence on a steam-cleaned seat for each screening -- but relying almost entirely on animated .gif images. It was surprisingly easy.

Going into the theater, I naturally expected this reaction after five minutes:

But as the film started I found the possibility of vampire vs. werewolf action strangely compelling. And then Taylor Lautner took his shirt off:

So much promise, but it was not be be:

Before I knew it, as the wedding scenes dragged on, the movie was fast becoming an epic embarrassment:

Not even the cheesy honeymoon sequence was capable of sustaining interest:

And then, holy crap, Bella is pregnant? By an undead creature with presumably undead spermatozoa? WTF?

Oh, what the heck. It's a cause for celebration, right?

Wait, she's what?

Several unpleasant birth scenes and werewolf fights later, it was time to:

The actual review will post Friday. There'll be a lot more words.