Premise: Harry and Company are back.
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe * Rupert Grint * Emma Watson * Michael Gambon * Alan Rickman * Jim Broadbent
Story: Harry Potter is back, along with Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, Dumbledore and the rest. This time Voldemort is a background player, with the direct threats personified by Draco Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Severus Snape. A new professor comes to Hogwarts, Professor Slughorn, who holds a key to defeating Voldemort. Harry also develops a relationship with Ginny Weasley, Ron's younger sister, while Ron and Hermione go through the pains of teen love. In the end, Malfoy represents a threat not to Harry, but to Dumbledore himself.
Review: I'm not going to go into how the changes from the book drastically change the feel and tone of the movie. While a couple of important plotlines and pivotal moments remain, a number are changed or outright removed. Instead I'll focus on the weaknesses of the film.
Draco has been established as a whiny ne'er-do-well who is no serious menace to Potter, instead he relies on his thuggish companions and his connections to more powerful menaces to try and ruin Potter's life. In this movie, he is pretty much the same but is being used to represent the main in-story threat, aside from vague menace from a silent voiceless character who appears vaguely wolfish (Fenrir Greyback is the name and it is seen briefly on a newspaper) and Bellatrix Lestrange who appears a couple of times to try and embody Voldemort's threat at the beginning and end of the film. So the movie lacks a primary credible threat, as Potter has demonstrated multiple times before that he can defeat Malfoy through his wits.
The teen love that dominates the majority of the film is focused on Ron and Hermione. While the performance of Lavendar Brown is refreshing at first, it quickly becomes grating - as it does for Ron in the storyline. Hermione's love affair with Cormac McLaggen plays mainly as her avoidance of a boor who is simultaneously Ron's rival in Quidditch. Luna and Harry have a date, but Harry's eyes are kept on Ginny Weasley. The problem with both romances is that both female characters are played as lovestruck fools - and in Ginny's case mostly a cipher with no established character of her own. Hermione spends most of the movie in an amped up performance of her scenes in earlier films - crying and miserable.
Slughorn (Broadbent), however, is a refreshing change and is a scene stealer when he appears. In his dealings with Dumbledore and Harry, he provides a refreshing change from the teen angst that goes on elsewhere.
Dumbledore (Gambon) is no longer the pre-eminent, wise and seemingly invincible wizard he was in the earlier movies. From his first appearance, Dumbledore appears worn down and constantly weakening - which could be understood if one knew the context from the book, but which is not explained in the movie.
There are pivotal scenes retained from the book, but as a result of the editing presented in condensing a thick text, the film doesn't really captivate the audience, aside from the initial Pottermania euphoria which accompanies every film. As a result, this film feels more like a filler episode in a series, where characters are slightly fleshed out, but it only serves to whet the appetite for a follow-up film - in this case the two adaptations of the follow-up novel.
Overall: Mediocre
Other Sites: Wikipedia * IMDb * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
No comments:
Post a Comment