In a word: Shrug.Worth it for the effects, and does a credible job of moving the series along, but this is just too much book to capture in one movie. So many new characters, so many large developments, just So Much of Everything that it's jarring simply as juxtaposed against a book that took like a hundred years to read. It moves through scenes like a flip book, and yet some scenes maddeningly dragged out past tiresome - sorry, HP in a hot tub just ain't worth lingering over, playing the hide-your-bits-in-the-bubbles way beyond sense - and the same with the ballroom scenes that really lumbered the pace. The central people we care about in this series are barely acknowledged in order to accommodate the greatly inflated cast of new figures who enter the story. Actors the likes of Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman, Maggie Smith and Miranda Richardson are reduced to bit players. A challenge to capture it all in 2.5 hours. And yet if any of those figures had been dropped despite the fact that keeping means they're all given pretty short shrift, there would be have been an outcry. My biggest objection is that they've turned Hermione into a weeping stupid git and the Death Eaters into a boys' choir. And the incarnation of Voldemort just ain't that scary - he's a bogeyman without real malevolence. I did very much like Brendan Gleason as Mad-Eye Moody, though.
Anyway, worth seeing for the whiz-bang factor, but a mere shadow of the book.
1 comment:
Gee, I saw this yesterday and although your criticisms are valid, I still thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly the very real dynamics of young teenagers trying to interact with each other. I still wish I could have gone to Hogwarts!
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