This is gonna be all stream of consciousness and just getting all my thoughts down stuff so just go with it, lol. I’m still snivveling with cold and it’s late and all that.

Yeh yeh … Criticisms first ‘cos I don’t just wanna be another “ohmygawwwwwwd” giddy fan person It’s simultaneously too long and too fast with “tons of stuff missing!”, like duh, it’s a 700 page novel lol. I don’t know, I personally think the screenplay here could be a little less jumpy, but Steve Kloves does a decent enough job of striking a balance between keeping it interesting and not pi$$ing off the die-hard “I want the book from cover to cover!” fans too much. I’d like to see them change the screenwriter with the director for the next one, though.

The acting’s a little off – Rupert Grint, as always, is the best of the main three kids (I mean, umm … students? lol) while Emma Watson still uses her eyebrows way too much and Daniel Radcliffe holds back a little too much, comes off a little school-play-ish, though to his credit he turns in the goods at the end.

It lacks the subtle, playful humour of Azkaban, which remains my favourite of the movies – the humour here is much broader, risqué, baudy even, and I’ll admit it provides a great contrast to the darker end of the emotional spectrum this movie enters. Newell does bring in a few “Cuaron-esque” elements, such as the nifty transition from the ‘weeping’ stained glass window Neville looks at outside Defense Against the Dark Arts to a scene outside in the rain.

So anyway … ohmygawwwwwd While, like I said, I didn’t love it as much as Azkaban – but this is only one viewing in, of course – it’s another entry to the series that’s leagues above the Chris Columbus installments. It’s a long time since I read the novel and it was fun watching and going, “oh crap I forgot about that.” The ending made me cry in the exact same way the book did (it’s not the death, it’s Dumbledore’s eulogy that does it).

I really like the things that this movie does – really close to the line stuff like Myrtle in the bathtub (I mean, seriously, omg, lol) and Ron’s “piss off” line, etc – that bode wonderfully for the rest of the movies. It’s reassuring to know ‘family’ movies as big as this can go to those places still.

The costumes, set design, photography, and visual effects are all simply beautiful, and I hope Patrick Doyle does the music for at least one more movie – I still think it’s a shame he didn’t do it for Azkaban, being as he’s worked with Alfonso Cuaron on two other pretty magical movies Great Expectations and A Little Princess. Katie Leung is fantastic as Cho Chang, too

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 12:14 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.