I finally set aside the requisite 8 million hours (feels like!) it takes to watch a Harry Potter movie and got my butt to a theater seat for this one at long last Monday. Now, before you get my tone wrong, it should be noted that I’m a big fan of the books, even the ones that sucked, and I’ve also really enjoyed all the movies so far, even the ones that sucked. So, I was excited to see it; it’s just a big time commitment. A two-and-a-half hour movie means no Diet Coke, after all, otherwise there will have to be a pee break. And a movie without a Diet Coke is always a challenge for me, because those are two great tastes that just go so great together. Kind of like peanut butter and cheese (hi, Dad!).
In any case, I have good news and bad news. The good news is, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe are absolutely incredible in this. I thought I couldn’t get enough Hermione before, but after this movie, I want to move her into my spare room so I can hang out with her all the time. There is a scene in which Herm (I can call her Herm now that she’s my roommate) and Harry sit on a step together while she cries about feeling unseen by the boy she loves (Ron, for the uninitiated) as Harry sits next to her and just exudes this insane amount of caring-for-her coupled with the sort of awkwardness that hits you when you get to be an older teenager and realize your best friend is someone of the opposite sex. It’s everything you could ever want in a friendship – that expression on his face. It’s perfection. You two crazy kids — you killed me with that, srsly.
Now the bad news: the rest of this movie tooootally sucked. I was stunned, actually, by how incredibly bad it truly was. And I’m not referring to plot cuts — I’m one of the rare book lovers who doesn’t get all het up about movies in which half the content of the story is axed. It has to be done, and I recognize that, even while I don’t always agree with the choices. Tell your story — I’ll listen. What I feel like you missed, I can always remind myself of with a reread of the (tome!) instead.
No, my problem wasn’t really with what got left out in terms of actual plot points. Instead, it was about what got left out in terms of theme, and what wasn’t there at all in terms of inspiration or creativity. First of all, it has some of the most subpar special effects I’ve ever seen, especially for a movie I know had a budget bigger than the GNP of half the world’s nations. I could practically see the green screen this time, not to mention that stupid fake-looking bridge in the beginning that looked SO FAKE, MY GOD! Plus, the scene with the horcrux necklace in the cave — what was up with the set for that? It starts out like the Holy Grail cave in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade coupled with Superman’s 1978 movie version of the Fortress of Solitude (cheesy crystals and all), and then there’s this sudden influx of Gollums slithering around looking for their Precious. What the. . .? That was just bad, Mr. Yates. BAD. So bad.
But theme, lordy, theme. The point of this installment in the series was to look at the impact or difficulty of making choices, right? Harry is suddenly thrust into the same dilemma that wracked poor Spiderman — he’s got a lot of power and with that comes a lot of responsibility. But at the same time, he’s just a kid, and he’s in love, and he’s confused, and everything he’s “supposed” to do as “the chosen one” seems to interfere with everything he wants to do as a kid. The whole movie should’ve been framed around this central concept.
Instead, it all comes out completely disjointed and untethered, like everybody was working from an outline that only had Roman numerals. It felt like they were trying to hit the parts they knew they had to hit to set up the next movie, bam bam bam check!, and then just threw in other stuff at random to fill the thing out. But “setting it up for the ending” is not an acceptable excuse for sucking. And this movie ended up having no emotional weight to it whatsoever, even when one of the most beloved characters in the series gets killed at the end. Which, lame.
Also, where was Hagrid? MORE HAGRID.
In any case, if you haven’t gotten your hiney in a movie theater seat for this one yet, I strenuously recommend waiting for DVD. Now that I know the same director is in charge of the final two movies (they’re splitting the last book into two pictures, in case you hadn’t heard), waiting for DVD will also be my plan unless both films get a ridiculous amount of enthusiastically positive reviews that manage to convince me it’s worth the big screen committment and unpausable pee breaks.
Between now and then, though, let’s hope director David Yates is paying attention to the criticisms about this installment and taking them to heart. Pay attention, Yates. Pay it. I beg you.
(Incidentally, this just in: for 99 cents, you can download an iPhone application called RunPee that will tell you the best scenes during which to hit the loo in the most popular films playing in theaters. It tells you what you missed when you get back, and also has a countdown feature that lets you know how much time you have to wait in line for a stall with a lock on it before you start to miss out on something important. BRILLIANT! Downloaded and installed, and Diet Coke, here I come!)
[Prequeue me at Netflix | View trailer]
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Helene Bonham Carter (HATE!), Jim Broadbent (LOVE!), David Thewlis
Now that it’s finally over — all the books, all the movies, all the everythings — I just wanted to say one last time:
Hey, I finally saw a movie in the theater! Hooray for me! I almost never do this anymore, because I have suuuuuch a low tolerance for rude people these days and they’re always so much harder to ignore in settings like movie theaters. But my Mom was coming to town and she wanted to see it too so we went together, which was really incredibly super fun. Hooray for Mom, who is my best movie-watching buddy EVER!