It’s tough to write a review that even touches negative of any movie in this series because let’s face it, it’s Harry Potter and kinda like Doctor Who, it’s ultimately all good. I’ll begin by saying that almost by default this is still the best new movie I’ve seen so far this year and it will almost certainly remain better than at least 50 of the 100 movies I’ll ultimately watch in 2009. The technical wizardry, casting, music and production design here are as flawless as if not more flawless than ever before. I watched the ITV “Behind the Magic” documentary last week and I was amazed I hadn’t seen the movie already, so closely had they seemed to capture how I saw the book while I was reading it – right down to the very specific like Jim Broadbent as Slughorn.

Sadly, though this kept pulling at my heartstrings in places most particularly through a beautiful “hands touching” motif, and though I took a lot of the dead air with a pinch of salt hoping the movie would pull itself together for what surely couldn’t fail to be an exhilarating finale, I just found myself growing more and more distant from the proceedings as time wore on. This is no Azkaban or Phoenix and will never work as a standalone work like those, the best in the series to date, did. Some will argue that these movies shouldn’t need to stand alone or even work for those who never read the books, and on that we’ll have to agree to disagree. The point is, though working out of context isn’t necessary for these movies, Azkaban and Phoenix proved to me that it was possible, so I figure why not make the effort.

This, like Goblet of Fire (we’ll leave the Columbus movies out of this because they were an entirely different world away), is an awkwardly choppy “edited highlights” Potter – and I don’t say that in the same way other critics insanely argue that “they didn’t put the whole book on screen, the philistines!” … I realise they couldn’t fit everything in here, but the fact that what they did fit in hangs together so shabbily just draws that much more attention to the slight waste of resources.

There’s plenty of good here, don’t get me wrong. Evanna Lynch, though barely onscreen for more than a few lines total, steals every scene she’s in yet again as Luna Lovegood. Bonnie Wright as Ginny Weasley has been growing on me since day one and there are moments here that suggest to me she might turn out to be the real actress come Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2. There are tons of laugh out loud moments, and this is humour I don’t generally go with like slapstick adolescent romance etc so this is saying something coming from me.

Ultimately I can happily accept this as a stepping stone to the Deathly Hallows – it ends as awkwardly as it’s executed but the technical brilliance and easy to love cast leave me gagging for the last two movies. The death at the end here doesn’t have nearly as much impact as the character deserves nor as what I felt when it was on paper and I don’t think that’s just because I knew it was coming this time. And for the record I’m sure all this disappointment from me isn’t just because they cut out the Crabbe and Goyle polyjuice thread lol. I’m sure any Harry Potter fan will be happy enough with this movie, but they knew that already. I would, however, frown a little at anybody who seriously declared it as their favourite. Azkaban and Phoenix are just plain better cinema by miles.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 8:48 pm and is filed under 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.