Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on January 30, 2011 – 6:37 PM15 Comments
See my comments on last year’s nominated iteration of the franchise. It has a few nice moments, but feels a little slower than the last one, and the acting is quite poor in spots. It’s up for Art Direction this time, which I suspect it won’t win. Whatever, it’s watched.
I’ve also seen Black Swan finally (review pending), so with four weeks to go, I’ve seen 16 out of 56 films and completed a single category. The rest of Far Thill is holding its own, with Gen at 13 films and Mr. S at 11; tonight’s Let’s Get This Over With Family Movie Revue will probably feature How To Train Your Dragon.
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Tags: Gen Harry Potter and the Blah-Blah Fishcakes It's Log movies Mr. Stupidhead Oscars 2011 Death Race
It was quite average HP-film, I thought. But the story of the three brothers is wonderfully made – I enjoyed that part very much.
Aw, but How To Train Your Dragon is fabulous! I think you’ll end up enjoying it more than you expect.
I liked that part too, @Cat.
@Cat – Yeah, that part felt really…Tim Burton-y, if Tim Burton worked with Neil Gaiman.
Also, I do want to say that I think they did an okay job of keeping it moving, considering that the first part of the book is literally 300 pages of…camping.
Aww, I LOVED this one! I liked all the Harry Potters to some degree, but I thought this one really brought the tension and drama even though you knew it wouldn’t come together until this summer.
And I SOOOO wanted Ron and Hermione to kiss, and then I remembered when I first saw Mr. Grint and Ms. Watson as little kids, and I teared up a bit. I’m a sap!
I quite liked Harry and Hermione dancing to Nick Cave’s “Little Children”, and Belatrix carving “mudblood” into Hermione’s arm. Neither part was in the book. Good additions.
The part where Clone!Harry and Clone!Hermione start making out? HORROR.
I’m with Scarlettb; I think you may end up being pleasantly surprised by How to Train Your Dragon. I put it on as background noise while I played a computer game, and I ended up closing the game and actually paying attention to the film. I enjoyed that the dragons — or at least the main one — were rather catlike and didn’t fall prey to the “all animals are dogs” trope.
Yes, I am also popping in to say my cold, dead, family-fare hating heart LOVED How to Train Your Dragon. It’s exponentially more clever than it really has any right to be and the only reason I saw it was because I was on a VERY long international flight. Totally a movie I was pleasantly surprised by.
HP has obvious flaws, but I think they did about as well as they could, given that they were making a movie from only the 1st part of the 7th book. Here’s hoping the next/final installation moves better and has more going on.
@Mystery Amanda: I thought the Horcrux projecting Harry/Herminone was the best moment of the film, and the first time the films have not cut or failed to execute what was a key exploration of Ron’s character in the books. I’d say that’s been my number 1 complaint about the films-Ron is just there and they’ve failed to develop his sense of inferiority to Harry and his brothers. I about screamed in the first one when Dumbledore failed to explain WHY Ron saw himself alone covered in glory in the Mirror or Erised.
Definitely want whoever did the animation of the story of the three brothers to get their own feature length movie. It reminded me a lot of “The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello” but apparently that’s not the same guy (http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/11/23/ben-hibon-deathly-hallows-animated-scene/). Which, huh. Now I just want those two guys to get together to make the most ridiculously gorgeous 2D animated feature ever.
Coming not very soon from ‘Mater Publishing, Inc.: The Boy Whose Face Stuck Like That: A Memoir by T. M. Riddle, and the smash sequel, Spiting Your Face, Or What I Didn’t Learn From Vol. 1, by T. M. Riddle.
@ferretrick: I reacted the same way when they cut one of my favorite scenes from Goblet of Fire – when Harry throws the button at Ron and says maybe it’ll leave a scar, which is what Ron wants anyway. Poor Ron, the redheaded stepchild.
They have increasingly had to cut more and more from the books for the films, which is understandable since the books are fairly serious doorstops. But you lose some of the depth & development of the characters that just can’t be replaced. I’ve become increasingly more lenient towards film adaptations of books in my old and cranky age, as longas I feel their being true to the spirit and the HPs have generally done well. But Ron & the Weasley’s do get shorted more and more as the films have progressed, and that’s a shame.
Overall, I liked this one, and it’s a pretty hard one to do, considering so much of what they shot from the book was really just one very long camping trip…