Posted

Jul 15th 2009

Mood

I went to see the midnight showing of this movie, which is something I never do. Usually I wait for about a week for the hype to die down and then go see the movie first thing in the morning when there aren’t any people there so I get the whole theater to myself. But this time, we went to the midnight showing. The line for concessions was insane. We were only about 10 people away from the front, but it still took us 25 minutes to get our food.

First off, why the hell would you go to a Harry Potter movie if you don’t like Harry Potter? Just to be a jerk to everyone else around you who’s trying to enjoy the movie? I’m of course talking about @$$holes in the audience who feel the need to add their biting social commentary to every quiet moment. This is why people don’t like going to the theater, because of people like them.

Trailers!
We saw the trailer for the new “Frog Princess” movie by Disney. It looks like it’s gonna be stupid. The moments with the humans looked interesting, but then they gotta throw in the “twist” that the girl turns into a frog too, and there’s voodoo magic, and sassy animals and... ugh... it just looks like a big pile of fail to me. I’m sorry Disney.

We also saw a trailer for “Where the Wild Things Are” which looks interesting. It’s live action and possibly Jim Henson studios helped create the creature effects... but I’m still reserved because I have a hard time believing they can turn a tiny children’s book into a feature length movie successfully. Keep an eye out for this one cuz it could go either way.

Finally a new Tim Burton movie about 9 dolls which have to protect earth from the very thing which apparently destroyed all of humanity in the first place. That alone just confuses me... humanity is dead, so what are these things protecting? The charred remains of earth? Wee... fun times. I dunno, I didn’t like the computer animation and it looks too... weird... I don’t think it’s gonna do well in the theaters.

THE MOVIE:
Yeah sorry about that, I just wanted to talk about the other stuff first. Ok the movie. David Yeats is a good director. He knows what he’s doing when it comes to Harry Potter. Unlike Chris Columbus who would’ve just smooshed everything together, David puts things together in a way that doesn’t leave out much from the story and gives people enough knowledge to be able to follow the story without having to have read the books. Of course for people who’ve read the books there’s gonna be a lot of stuff you’ll recognize. But out of all the books, I can’t think of any significant scene which was cut from this movie.

The camera direction is great, the effects are breathtaking, and the whole movie is really coherent and enjoyable....

Except for the ending... Now spoilers everyone! At the end of the book, at least to my recollection, when Harry and Dumbledore go off on their adventure the deatheaters come in through Draco’s wardrobe and start tearing shit up. Harry anticipated this and gave his friends the last drops of that liquid luck stuff just in case. That’s not in the movie. The movie is actually... VERY anticlimactic. Pretty much after the end of the horcrux sequence, the movie just... ends.

Dumbledore dies, but I didn’t feel sad and I can’t tell if it’s because I knew it was gonna happen or because it just simply wasn’t powerful enough to affect me. Also, in the book Harry watches it from under the invisibility cloak and he’s frozen too, forcing him to watch the scene play out. In this version Harry hides under the wood work and can see the whole thing... It just felt out of character to make him simply watch the events unfold. I mean... he’s Harry Potter! He wouldn’t have just stood there unless he was cursed, which he wasn’t. So I dunno... that kinda made the ending not as poweful to me.

Then there’s the whole issue of the “half blood prince.” It’s the title of the movie after all, so it should mean something... and the big mystery is that Snape is the Half Blood Prince all along... but we don’t know WHY that’s important. All of the events that take place with the prince and the diary and of Harry becoming good at potions just seemed a little too rushed.

Finally there’s a sequence which was added and wasn’t in the books as far as I remember. I’m talking about the burning of the Weasley house. Because of all the other shortcomings of the movie, I felt that this sequence was unnecessary. It just seemed to me like they could’ve used that 10 minutes or so to help strengthen other parts of the movie and make them better. I understand why it’s there, because they’re trying to establish that Harry is always being followed and watched by the deatheaters and he puts good people in danger simply for being Harry... but I dunno... I felt it was unnecessary.

For the good parts, there were a lot of fun moments between Harry, Ron, Hermionie, Ginny, and Ron’s new girlfriend. Usually I cringe when I watch teenagers trying to be teens and falling in love and stuff, but this was actually quite fun to watch and a lot of times you could hear people giggling in the back of the theater.

The sequence with the liquid luck is fun too. Daniel’s performance under the influence is just enjoyable to watch and it’s one of the best moments of the entire film.

So overall... I have no idea how I feel about this movie. I really liked everything else about it, but the ending just left me feeling cheated and disappointed. Part of it might’ve been the angle which we were sitting. We were almost in the front row and on the right hand side, so everything we were watching had a grotesque distortion to it and by the end of 2 ½ hours my neck was killing me. Maybe had I watched it from a more normal angle I would’ve been more comfortable and been able to read some of the text and stuff and followed things better. I dunno...

I hear it’s coming out in 3-D soon, so we’re gonna go see it again when it does.