{"id":21596,"date":"2011-07-15T19:28:30","date_gmt":"2011-07-16T01:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=21596"},"modified":"2014-06-13T15:39:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T21:39:10","slug":"movie-review-harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/15\/movie-review-harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the final installment<\/a> of this very long movie series — they done good.<\/p>\n

[No spoiler in the post, I think, but the comments may be another matter.]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’ve read the book, you know pretty much what to expect, though there a few adds (and a huge number of takes); even doing half \u00a0the book ends up requiring a massive and distracting amount of exposition and info-dumping, especially at the beginning, but never really escaping the problem until the end.<\/p>\n

(Not, as Kay noted, that Rowling eschewed the info-dumps, but in the context of a movie, it stands out. A lot.)<\/p>\n

There’s also a massive number of characters — it’s great to see some many professors (and students) at Hogwarts for that part of the film, and good to see the faculty doing something other than sitting at the head table. \u00a0Prof. McGonagall (Maggie Smith) gets a star turn or three, and, huzzah, Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) gets a lot of time on screen and in story.<\/p>\n

What strikes me most about the film is how different it is from the first installment in the series. \u00a0That was a kid’s film, through and through. \u00a0This one has some damned scary moments for any young’uns, some tragic ones, too, as well as a structure and scenes (and blocks of exposition) that would make a lot of kids squirm.<\/p>\n

As well, the whole “big, exciting romp” of the early films gives way to a much more sober, thoughtful, considered movie. \u00a0Yeah, there’s plenty of exciting action, but in a lot of places it’s just in the background, something happening while Harry (and, to a lesser degree, Ron and Hermione) are trying to win their part of the war with Voldemort. \u00a0It’s a bigger, flashier film than “Part 1<\/a>,” but it remains tense and focused on the personal struggle. \u00a0Even after the grand climax, there’s no parade and cheers and noble speeches, which is both fitting and not what one would expect if the movie were not taken from an existing book.<\/p>\n

(And, yes, the last few minutes of the film are set as the epilogue of the book was, which doesn’t work quite as well as I might help (for ironic age reasons), but still provides some nice closure.)<\/p>\n

The FX are solid, but nothing that’s going to win an Academy Award for innovation. \u00a0We’ve pretty much seen it all, in fact — but that’s okay, because this is not a set piece about flash and fireworks.<\/p>\n

Like the FX, the acting is good, but not spectacular — on a par with the last film, with maybe less material to work with between the explanations and the explosions. \u00a0The folks there, leads or characters, know their roles and work them well. It will be interesting to see where Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint (not to mention Tom Felton and Matthew Lewis) go next.<\/p>\n

Still, for all the characters, a lot of them other than the mains feel wasted — as much background as the FX are. \u00a0Too many feel like they were there because they had to be there, but not enough is done with them, living or dead.<\/p>\n

Kay and I saw the film in 3D (though not IMAX). \u00a0I don’t regret it, but I don’t think it added as much to the film as it did to the ticket price. \u00a0You can see this in 2D and not lose anything significant. \u00a0It is worth seeing in a theater, though.<\/p>\n

All in all, it was a fine way to send off a movie series that a lot of kids have grown up on, and even adults have grown used to. \u00a0More importantly, it makes me want to go back and reread the books. \u00a0Good show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the final installment of this very long movie series — they done good. [No spoiler in the post, I think, but the comments may be another matter.] If you’ve read the book, you know pretty much what to expect, though there a few adds (and a huge number of takes); even doing half \u00a0the … Continue reading “Movie Review: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[527,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harry-potter","category-media-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/harry-potter-deathly-hallows-part-2-posters-slice-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":21606,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/15\/just-in-case-you-need-a-harry-potter-recap-before-you-go-and-see-the-new-movie.html","url_meta":{"origin":21596,"position":0},"title":"Just in case you need a Harry Potter recap before you go and see the new movie","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 15-Jul-11 10:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The first seven movies recapped in seven minutes! Vaguely wish I'd run through this before I went to see HP 7.2. (via kottke and Doyce)","rel":"","context":"In "Harry Potter"","block_context":{"text":"Harry Potter","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/harry-potter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21925,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/02\/book-review-harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone-by-j-k-rowling-1997.html","url_meta":{"origin":21596,"position":1},"title":"Book Review: “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling (1997)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 2-Aug-11 10:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling My rating: 4 of 5 stars It's difficult to extricate myself from the movie version of this book when considering the book itself. I read the full series some time back, but have seen the movies (courtesy of my daughter) so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24153,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/02\/movie-review-harry-potter-and-the-half-blood-prince.html","url_meta":{"origin":21596,"position":2},"title":"Movie Review: “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 2-Dec-11 12:58pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Somehow I never did one of these when I went to the actual cinema and saw it. \u00a0Since we rewatched it last night for the first time since, a few summary thoughts for the blog-record: Dark, dark, darkety-dark. \u00a0That'll continue through the next two flicks. Finally feeling sorry for Draco.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Harry Potter"","block_context":{"text":"Harry Potter","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/harry-potter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/harry_potter_and_the_half_blood_prince.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":19277,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/19\/a-bit-of-potter-pre-movie-viewing.html","url_meta":{"origin":21596,"position":3},"title":"A bit of Potter, pre-movie-viewing","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 19-Nov-10 3:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Ha! Movie Trailers - Movies Blog","rel":"","context":"In "Harry Potter"","block_context":{"text":"Harry Potter","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/harry-potter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11541,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/08\/04\/harry_retrospective.html","url_meta":{"origin":21596,"position":4},"title":"Harry retrospective","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 4-Aug-07 7:52pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Couldn't find the movie Kitten wanted to watch, so we watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone with her for the first time.\u00a0 Then she wanted the next one, so...","rel":"","context":"In "Harry Potter"","block_context":{"text":"Harry Potter","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/harry-potter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":749,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/17\/the_down_side_t-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":21596,"position":5},"title":"The down side to the Harry Potter success","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 17-Nov-01 12:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"USS Clueless, who lambastes people who see the success of the war so far only terms of the disasters to come, laments over the success of the Harry Potter movie:...","rel":"","context":"In "Harry Potter"","block_context":{"text":"Harry Potter","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/harry-potter"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40668,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21596\/revisions\/40668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}