Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Harry Potter

I went to the Harry Potter movie with different expectations than you. Or most of you. I read books 2-4 but couldn’t get past the parts the first 100 pages in book 5. So I watched the movie and called it good. A year later, I didn’t remember anything about the 5th book. I thought this must’ve meant that I didn’t see it. So I re-watched movies 3, 4, 5 in prep for seeing the 6th in the theater. And I recalled some of the details of 5 but the ending was a total shock to me. The Boyfriend laughed since he remembered everything and couldn’t understand why I didn’t. It just wasn’t a remarkable movie. Sure it was a Harry Potter adventure, entertaining in a way that they usually are, but the plot wasn’t juicy enough to grab me. None the less I was excited to see the 6th movie expecting some relationships and maybe a payoff on the Ron Herminie thing.

The 6th was ok. Not having read the book I felt like there were a few plot twists I missed until later than my fellow viewers. It definitely felt more choppy than any of the previous movies. I missed the moving stairs, I missed the transition from Hogwarts to the Christmas party, I missed the fat lady, and I felt like it was missing a great deal of character development on Snape. It’s clear fairly early that he must be the mystery character but why is he playing both sides? I think the director meant to build intrigue for the next movie but cut too much of the explanation of what Snape was thinking. Or Alan Rickman didn’t express enough during his screen time, which I can’t imagine. I did like how dark the scenery was and overall the movie felt more like the first movie which roused pleasant feelings for me. Here’s the part that really hit home for me, someone dies at the end of these movies. I cried over Black, but didn’t even blink an eyelash over Dumbledore. Come on, I cry if a horse dies on TV and I don’t even like horses. Again not enough character development, I spent the movie noticing how odd Dumbledore was acting but not connecting to him. So next year when I’m trying to remember this movie, I’ll be able to check back here and see that I would give it a C+ overall.

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