Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -Part 1-

In this episode of Harry Potter, Harry and his wizardly buddies are gonna fight some "Bleach" Hollows!  Not just any Hollows - Deathly Hollows!  I don't know what that means... but it should be awesome!  I wonder what Hermione's Bankai will look like?  Should I start shipping Ron and Rukia?

Okay, tragically there is no Hollows.  The title actually says "Hallows", which is far lamer.  There actually isn't much of anything in this movie.  You never go to Hogwarts, most of the cast only shows up in the first forty minutes and the last like twenty, and the plot doesn't even really move all that much.  Honestly for all that happens in this film, I have no idea why it had to be two and a half hours, this thing could have had an hour cut easily and been perfectly fine.  There isn't all that much story to this movie, and yet it is so long.  Basically this movie is about camping.  Having not read the book, I can't say I know if this actually is faithful.  I do know that if this movie is a faithful adaptation, the book should have actually been named "Harry Potter and the Lovely English Camping Holiday".

That's all really unfortunate, since this is probably the most well-made Harry Potter movie yet.  As a matter of fact, the only one prior to this that I actually liked was "Half-Blood Prince", and I suspect that might be because I stopped reading at Book Five.  The main trio have become exceptionable actors, the effects are good enough, and the directing is beautiful.  Heck, even if this movie is mostly a vacation, I'd like to go visit Britain now, the director made it look so lovely.  It isn't easy to make grey rainy ol' England look like a stunning Middle Earth fantasy landscape, but somehow they pulled it off.  Its a good movie - triply good if you're an ultra hardcore Harry Potter fan who ritualistically carves a lightning-bolt scar into your forehead every night while you pray to your Harry-God.  Even if you aren't those people, you'd probably like it.  But still:  too much camping!
 
My personal Harry Potter experience pretty much ended when I reached fifth grade and got too old for my Mom to read me the books before bedtime (it was for that very reason that I went with my Mom to see this - aint I a sweetie?).  Reading the books on my own just wasn't the same, and honestly I had really ceased to care.  I said to myself "heck, I'll just wait seven years or so and then the movies will fill me in on everything."  And look:  they have!  Wonderful!  The only problem is that, in what can only be called a desperate search for more money, Warner Bros have divided up the seventh Harry Potter movie into two parts*.  So instead of actually concluding the story, this Harry Potter movie just kinda ends half-way through with nothing resolved, and not a single major plot line concluded.  If you want to know how it actually ends, wait until July.  And you better have ten more bucks - HAHA!

By the way, before I start getting real deep into this movie, I'd like to personally thank the Harry Potter series for not filming their last movie in 3D, even though they so easily could have.  I'm starting to hate this 3D business more and more, especially after the latest abomination that was "Saw 3D".  Also most critics of "The Last Airbender" focused on the bad 3D.  I can't even imagine how bad the 3D must have been for that movie considering that so much was so wrong with that abominable turd and yet they focused on just the visuals.  Jesus Christ.

Okay, now we can start for real:  Like four books ago the Evil Lord Voldemort returned to life and now is ready to begin his evil scheme to take over the world!  Dumbledore is dead, the wizard government has turned ultra-Nazi, nobody is safe, and Harry Potter is at the top of Voldemort's hit list.  Also, if you think that's bad, it turns out that Voldemort is functionally immortal thanks to seven Plot Coupons called Horcruxes that are scattered around the world.  So now Harry must go on an epic magical quest to destroy them all.  ...But most of the time he just sits around camping with Ron and Hermione without any clue as to what to do.  As you can see, the movie begins with so much crazy intense energy.  The entire world is coming apart around the heroes - its so unsafe they can't even go back to school.  Then they get separated from the rest of the world and meander around the woods for a long time.  Its very strange, since prior to the camping, you actually got to see scenes that didn't directly involve Harry Potter - then the whole rest of the movie is first person.  There's this whole huge wizarding war going on, and we focus on this?

Its doubly disappointing since the movie began with so many interesting characters, who just fade away.  Voldemort shows up only in Harry's psychic visions.  The movie starts with a meeting of all the evil characters in what can only be called the Legion of Doom - we never see any of that again.  Snape is there for the entirety of three minutes, poor Alan Rickman.  Mad-Eye Moody dies off-screen!  So does the damn Minister of Magic - in what is described as a pretty awesome last man standing fight, sadly.  What about Fred & George, Lupus, Hagrid, the bearded evil new Minister of Magic, Draco Malfoy, Harry's girlfriend, Ginny?  (By the way, God Help You if you haven't read the books or seen the earlier movies - though you should know better than to start watching a series in the last episode.)  I guess they're all unimportant compared to Harry's camping trip.  There was a great broomstick battle at the beginning of the movie, never happens again.  We get to see all this titanic struggles within the Ministry of Magic, where the new evil Minister decides to go Fascist on the world's ass (cue "Hell March"), but we never really see much of what this means for the whole world once Hermione pitches the tent.  Are the Muggles okay?  I'm a Muggle, I do have vested interest in their survival.  There's is so much awesome stuff going on, every character pulling a Vive La Resistance and yet the characters who are so often in the least danger are the ones the movie focuses upon!  Darn it!

As for what Harry and his friends do, it boils down to not very much.  They find a Horcrux after a daring break in at the Minister of Magic, but have no idea how to destroy it.  It takes them a half hour to even figure out that they need to find to a Magic Sword to destroy the thing.  Finding the sword takes another forty minutes.  And that's the only Horcrux they take out - there's still four** more.  They manage to drag this time out by having Ron leave for awhile since the Horcrux acts like the Ring of Power and turns whoever wears it into a total dick.  Ron thinks that Harry and Hermione are screwing behind his back (if they actually were this would have been a better movie), and so whines a lot then runs away like a total bitch.  Then about an hour later he comes back at the nick of time to save the day.  Wow, didn't see that coming at all, movie.  Sadly all this is really here to just burn time, nothing really is resolved with Ron's little sideplot:  he doesn't finally get with Hermione.  Don't bring a watch to this movie, because the second hour will make you check it a lot.

I suspect this whole movie is actually a propaganda piece orchestrated by the British government in order to boost the UK's tourism.  Some of the scenes are basically just an extended travel ad.  But if you got nothing better to show than Hermione and Harry dancing for no particular reason, you might as well get down and dirty with the scenery porn.  By the way, the dancing scene was completely pointless but it was still my favorite part.  Too bad it was only there to give the Harry x Hermione crowd a cruel tease.

On the other hand, I can commend this movie for being properly dark.  The main Harry Potter theme is way too whimsical to be in this movie, so its kept only for the opening and end credits.  Characters die left and right, which is pretty shocking for Harry Potter, which usually only had one death per book/movie.  Even Harry's owl dies!  NO!!  Why did they have to kill Hedwig!  HEDWIG!!!!

(Review interrupted due to massive weeping)

...sniff.

Anyway, conclusion time:  If you love Harry Potter so much you make T-shirts just for film premiers (we all know one of them) you've already seen this movie twice and probably are plotting to sneak into J. K. Rowling's house just to steal a lock of her Blessed Hair.  Otherwise if you're just a casual person who is interested in the series, the movie's okay.  When combined with its other half, it might be far better, but as it stands, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is not the movie of the year, or even the movie of the week.  Everybody here worked very hard on this film (unlike some other movies I can mention), but I really don't think that this story was meant to be cut in half like this.  This installment had too little action - the next installment might have nothing but action.  ...Actually that sounds really cool!

Here's to next July!

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* "Twilight 4" is pulling the same crap.  However, since every passing day I become more and more a fan of that series, I don't think I mind.  Hell, I might actually read the book in anticipation for the explosive finale.  Two words:  rape wolf.  That's all I need to hear.

** Ron claims there are three more, but he isn't counting very well.  Voldemort has seven, apparently.  In Book Two Harry destroyed one, in Book Six Dumbledore destroyed another.  Now there's another one down.  So that leaves four, not three.  Unless I'm wrong somehow.  This is very confusing.