Harry Potter Goes Camping around England

Just came back from seeing Harry Potter The Deathly Hallows part 1, which turned out into a real disappointment. This is going to be a review of that film, so SPOILER alert, not that the movie is really worth watching, let alone paying for. But now on with the review.

The beginning of the movie was pretty awesome, the mood and the music are straight from Dark Knight and I half expected Batman to appear, then we see Snape marching into a creeping looking mansion where Voldemort and his Legion of Doom is having meeting and the main topic on the agenda is, how do we capture/assassinate Harry Potter. This doesn't feel like a movie about a magic kid who gets bullied at school, this Harry Potter meets Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer and James Bond. The movie continued on this line with chases, ambushes, near misses, intelligence gathering, betrayals, paranoia and daring raids into enemy strongholds. Just swap the magic wands with Glocks, SIGs, Uzis and AKs, you get an action packed secret agent film, which I thought was fan-fucking-tastic. The best part is that all of this is happening with a background of a society that is falling under the heel of oppressive tyranny that practices similar racial doctrine that the nazis had. Harry Potter has become a lead figure in a resistance movement fighting against an oppressive regime. How could this movie possibly go wrong from here?

Then Harry, Hermione and Ron escape to a forrest where they "temporarily" set up a camp and then they stay there feeling sorry for themselves, listening to the radio and not really doing anything for the rest of the film  All other characters disappear, the plot doesn't move any where, the characters don't really do anything remotely interesting or meaningful and nothing happens, the scenery occasionally changes as the move to a new cinematic spot somewhere in England, but thats about it. At this point I got really pissed, what happened to fighting the Dark Lord? What happened to the other characters? What is going in the society? How is the change in government affecting the lives of the people in the Potter-vers? All of these interesting plot lines and events that they started to talk about in the first half are completely abandoned and all we get is 3 people in a tent having a really boring holiday. Everything that happened in this part that took about 40 minutes could have been done in about 10.

When the director decides to spend the latter half of the film on useless carbage, you know that the end is just going to plain suck and guess what it did. Its basically one deux ex machina after another.  First the Ghost of Bambi appears to Harry and leads him to a Magic Sword which just happens to be in a bond 100 meters from where they were camping. Then Ron comes back(He left at one point). Then they search for clues get betrayed and get caught by conveniently placed bad guys. No Problem, a magic elf appears, completely decimates Harry's captors and Harry and buddies escape. The End.

The movie turned out this way because the studios got greedy. This is based on the last Harry Potter book, so they better milk every penny out of this cash cow while they still can, so what I think happened was that they had a solid 3 hour screenplay for the last book, but they figured out that if they have two films they will get twice the money. So they had to add about 45 minutes of extra to make two two hour films, but since they were greedy bastards they didn't want to invest too much into it in terms of money, writing a meaningful plot or anything of real value. All they needed to do was to send the 3 principal actors into a wood for few days with a tent, a cameraman and an audio guy, the director wasn't sent, since nothing really happens in the woods the actors don't really need direction anyway.


The cast of Harry Potter includes some pretty awesome villains, Bellatrix Lestrange played by Helena Bonham Carter is simply awesome, insane, cruel and really entertaining to watch, she could easily be the girlfriend of Joker played by Heath Ledger from Dark Knight. Dolores Umbridge played by Imelda Staunton is another big favourite, a classic narcissistic sociopath with sadistic tendencies, looks all cute and cuddly on the outside, greets you with a big smile but underneeth beats a dark heart that wishes nothing but to bully, humiliate, dominate and hurt those who stand against her wishes. And finally Severus Snape played by Alan Rickman is perhaps the most complicated character in the series, but sadly he was reduced to a meer cameo in this film. Of the heroes Ron and Hermione are always entertaining, its fun to watch a screen couple that don't constantly profess their love to one anohter or kiss or do all that other cliche romantic stuff, reminds me of Princess Leia and Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back.


Speaking of Empire Strikes Back Roger Moore said the following in his review of the movie  "Alternately funny and touching, it's the best film in the series, an "Empire Strikes Back" for these wizards and their wizarding world. And those effects? They're so special you don't notice them." Sorry Roger this was not the best HP film and comparing this to Empire Strikes Back is like comparing Sacher cake to a Shit Cake. This movie tries to have similar contemplative part like the one Luke had in Dagobah, but with a one big difference. In the Dagobah part of Empire Strikes Back we learn interesting things about the nature of the Force, the philosophy of the Jedi and Luke grows as a person as he gets ready to face Darth Vader, in this film nothing remotely similar happens, in fact nothing really meaningfull happens. Plus in Empire Strikes Back we get to also watch what goes on with the other characters, which is what they should have done with this film.

Finally words, this movie could have been a really good movie, if they had gone along with the Harry Potter meets Jack Bauer thing, but instead they had to ruin it with a needless and poorly executed melodrama and a really stupid ending. Based on this part I won't be watching the next part at a theater where I have to pay, I will watch it online for free. Serves the greedy bastards at Hollywood right.