Movie Review #109

I went to see "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" with some trepidation, after glancing at reviews that varied from "the best one yet" to "long and boring". In the end I was pretty satisfied, after being pretty disappointed in the last film, which lacked a certain charm and had ackward editing of the acting scenes. In this film, the 3 kids have finally turned into real actors. The movie starts and ends with action, but has the same problem as the 1/2 half of the book ... the kids are camping out in the wilderness and not a lot goes on, and it gets a bit boring. The director could have picked up the pace either by editing out a bunch of it or switching to the storyline of what was going on in the wider world. I have always felt that with the "Harry Potter" movies is that they are pretty to watch but pale in comparison to the complexity of what goes on in the books. They will never truly satisfy the die-hard fan who fantasizes about a 50 hour exact replication of the novels (which I would probably watch quite happily). The movie barely touches on the doubt that that Harry has about Dumbledore's motives so it will be interesting to see if they talk about this more in the next film. This movie feels like the 1/2 half of a very long film so now we all have to wait until July ... boo. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 78%.

By the way I have never seen anyone write about the super obvious lifting of themes from Lord of the Rings (the burden of the locket, wandering around lost in the wilderness)... why is that?