Posted on Sunday, 17 July 2011

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PT.2 (Yates, 2011, C. Mostly spoiler free) - Well, that’s a mouthful. I kid, I kid - of course I love the whole HP thing. I started reading the books for a very superficial reason (hey, I don’t have a whole lot of namesakes, ok?), but I genuinely love books 1-4, and I enjoyed the last three too. As for the movies, after seeing the first one in cinemas I skipped the following ones until the last three (I did catch up with #4 in cinemas) - they were nice illustrations of the books, to me, but not very interesting otherwise. It surprised me, then, how touched I ended up being during this one, which really felt like something momentous was coming to an end.  It has to be said: for a huge, blockbuster franchise, the HP series is relatively not-dumbed down. It expects the audience to keep track of a huge universe, with strange language and complex rules, and it even has some good lessons embedded in it, like: you can tell quite a bit about a person from how they treat their pets and inferiors. Or: be nice to the pudgy kid with the bad teeth, ‘cause he might grow up to be really hot*. I also like that, while pure evil does exist in the universe J.K. Rowling invented, pure good doesn’t, at least not in human form. As her characters grow up, the world grows harder to understand (as opposed to what you think as a kid), and the adults who seemed to have it all figured out turn out to be just human, after all. All this to say: if you liked the rest, you’ll like this one. My favorite elements are above: HB(i)C playing at being Hermione in disguise, the beautifully animated and affecting dragon, and Matt Lewis. But then again, if you’ve already seen 7 movies, and probably also read 7 books, you don’t really need a critic’s opinion to decide whether to go see how it all ends. *oh, was that not the intended lesson? Ok, he might turn out to play an instrumental role in saving the world, how ‘bout that. ETA: Oh, and McGonagall is the bomb-shizzle. Maggie Smith is great at delivering seemingly simple lines as “I always wanted to try that spell” with a little smile that makes it wonderful.   

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PT.2 (Yates, 2011, C. Mostly spoiler free) - Well, that’s a mouthful. I kid, I kid - of course I love the whole HP thing. I started reading the books for a very superficial reason (hey, I don’t have a whole lot of namesakes, ok?), but I genuinely love books 1-4, and I enjoyed the last three too. As for the movies, after seeing the first one in cinemas I skipped the following ones until the last three (I did catch up with #4 in cinemas) - they were nice illustrations of the books, to me, but not very interesting otherwise. It surprised me, then, how touched I ended up being during this one, which really felt like something momentous was coming to an end. 

It has to be said: for a huge, blockbuster franchise, the HP series is relatively not-dumbed down. It expects the audience to keep track of a huge universe, with strange language and complex rules, and it even has some good lessons embedded in it, like: you can tell quite a bit about a person from how they treat their pets and inferiors. Or: be nice to the pudgy kid with the bad teeth, ‘cause he might grow up to be really hot*. I also like that, while pure evil does exist in the universe J.K. Rowling invented, pure good doesn’t, at least not in human form. As her characters grow up, the world grows harder to understand (as opposed to what you think as a kid), and the adults who seemed to have it all figured out turn out to be just human, after all.

All this to say: if you liked the rest, you’ll like this one. My favorite elements are above: HB(i)C playing at being Hermione in disguise, the beautifully animated and affecting dragon, and Matt Lewis. But then again, if you’ve already seen 7 movies, and probably also read 7 books, you don’t really need a critic’s opinion to decide whether to go see how it all ends.

*oh, was that not the intended lesson? Ok, he might turn out to play an instrumental role in saving the world, how ‘bout that.

ETA: Oh, and McGonagall is the bomb-shizzle. Maggie Smith is great at delivering seemingly simple lines as “I always wanted to try that spell” with a little smile that makes it wonderful.   

Notes