Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

It's become a tradition that Hannan takes me out to see a movie every year for my birthday, and since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was coming out the same week as my birthday, we decided to pre-order tickets for the midnight viewing. And then Edward, Anu, Ronsee, and Julie decided to get in on it, too, so the six of us all went to line-up at the theatre nearly two-and-a-half hours in advance - and there was already a massive queue when we got there. But we managed to get some decent seats, which made us forget about the super annoying pre-teens/teens in line with us.

I'm kind of glad that the last movie is split into two parts, because they can get into so much more depth of the story within each film and capture more of the detail (which the last six movies lacked - I found that they got the main points of the books, but the little things that make the world of Harry Potter so believable and realistic in the books were lost in the movies). I mean, it sucks that we have to wait until next July to watch the next part, but I like how Part 1 flowed. There was almost nothing I didn't like about this film. I haven't thought this about any Harry Potter film since Prisoner of Azkaban. They did a great job at capturing that feeling of great depression and incredible isolation of the book. And, personally, I liked that they didn't re-cap everything that's happened in the last six books. I think the director was like, "Fuck that, everyone watching this movie should've watched the last six, anyway." (I mean, it's like watching Lord of the Rings. You wouldn't watch the 3rd film without having watched the first two.) I also liked the style of the animation they used to tell the story of the Deathly Hallows. It's not a big thing in the grand scheme of things, but I think it adds more variety to the style of the film.

Daniel Radcliffe has never done anything for me as Harry Potter (then again, Harry is probably one of the most boring characters of the series), but Emma Watson does a fantastic job this time around and you can really see that she's grown as an actress, especially in the scene where she casts a spell on her parents to make them forget she ever existed. It was totally heart-wrenching. Helena Bonham Carter, again, is perfect in the role of Bellatrix Lestrange (completely and ridiculously ape-shit crazy), and Rupert Grint (and the Weasley twins, during the short period of screen time they have) delivers the one-liners that he's now known for to lift us (slightly) from the constant feeling of loss and sadness of the story. I felt that the Ginny-Harry storyline should've been more developed, though. They have a few quick scenes together and then nothing. Perhaps they'll come back to this in the second part. I do think, however, that the Harry-Hermione sexual hallucination via Ron was kind of unnecessary, though. I mean, I get that Ron's all paranoid and deranged and shit at that point, but did they really need the quasi-nudity? Personally, I think it takes away from the integrity of the story. But, hey, sex sells, right?

Overall, I really loved this film. People who haven't read the books might not appreciate it as much, only because there are quite a lot of references that only true Harry Potter fans will understand. But it captures the bleak, melancholic, apocalyptic feel of the book to a tee, and the fact that Part 1 makes it worth waiting until July for the second part is a huge victory in itself.

Rating: 4.5/5