I’d blow your horn of Narnia.
The latest installment of the teenage wizard’s story has a decidedly gloomy mood, carrying on the trend of making every film darker than the previous one. In his first year, Harry was learning about wonderful magic and playing amicably with his new friends in Hogwarts. Now, he’s learning about evil Horcruxes and arguing hormonally with his old friends in a tent. It’s dark from the start; Bill Nighy isn’t happy, presumably because they’re going to kill him off in a scene’s time, the Death Eaters are doing some menacing sitting around a table,
(There’s another giant snake and a random woman who Voldy bumps off hanging around, just to remind us that these are the bad guys. As if the gothic furniture wasn’t enough.)
and the trio are emotionally preparing to leave their families and embark on their quest.
Hermione tearfully erased the memory of herself from her parents’ minds so they won’t look for her. I’d have just told them I was going on my Gap Year.
Fortunately a barnstorming action sequence follows, ramping the pace up a bit. The aftermath of this is that a few people die, but no-one really seems to care that much. It’s probably just as well, as JK got rather gun happy with the last book, and half of the characters are going to get it next film. Honestly, it’s Harry Potter, not Midsomer Murders.
Before one of the Weasleys gets hitched with the French girl, there’s the obligatory romance scene, which annoyed me as I’d almost forgotten that Ginny existed. It’s not that I don’t like her, but her relationship with Harry is so hurried and unconvincing that I’d be less surprised if he got with Snape.
Grandad from Outnumbered pops up during the wedding to give us a bit of history for Dumbledore and Grindlewald. Oh, Grindlewald. You may have ended up as an evil dark wizard, but judging from the three-second shot of you when you were young (and some internet research), boy did Dumbley have a good thing going. Jamie Campbell Bower is prettier than I ever will be.
Dreamy doesn’t quite do it.
And now there’s saliva all over my keyboard. I’ll finish the review off, though. That’s the kind of dedication you guys deserve.
Anyways, it wouldn’t be a proper English wedding without a punch-up, and the Death Eaters are happy to provide us with one of those. Only a few more people die than usual. Luckily, Hermione can teleport (or apparatus or whatever), so the trio bravely run away, abandoning Ron’s family to their fate.
A nice little section follows, where the crew break into the Ministry of Magic using that well-worn plot device, polyjuice potion. They make a narrow escape, and Hermione teleports them all into the woods. (WTF? How was that the first place you thought of?)
In the book, this was the part when they spent ages camping and things got so boring I started banging my head repeatedly against the wall just to stay awake. Minus two million brain cells later, I finally got to the good bit. So when they started camping in the film, I felt pretty certain that they’d just skim over it, thereby avoiding a dull middle section. They didn’t skim over it. They went through the whole sorry thing in great detail. And practically nothing happened. Harry, Ron and Hermione sat around in a tent for days feeling miserable. It reminded me of my family holidays. If you’ve never experienced that, imagine being stuck in a confined space with people you don’t get on with in a normal-sized house for hour upon dreary hour, wishing it all to end.
The main story here is that Ron gets all angry because he thinks Hermione and Harry are getting it on. Come on, Ron. Harry is a bit of a minger, and Hermione is so gorgeous even I would think twice before saying no. Do you think the girl has no standards?
The only good part of the camping is the Snatchers, a posse of men roaming around snatching people Voldy doesn’t like. My favourite was Scabior, their leader. I cannot not like a man who wears plaid trousers and eyeliner whilst keeping up an ominous demeanour. All I can say is, if you wanted to snatch me, I'd run away very, very slowly.
Things pick up towards the end of the film, with a lovely animated section for the fairy story of the Deathly Hallows, and the long-awaited arrival of Dobby, everyone’s favourite self-harming house elf. There's also Bellatrix doing some freaky (and slightly pervy) torturing of Hermione.
Some lust-filled stares there.
The whole film ends on a bit of a downer. The trio's horcrux-finding mission was a bit of a fail, they've all been bashed up a bit, and, oh yeah, the world's going to be destroyed by Lord Voldemort. But all of this pales in comparison to the fact that JK Rowling murdered Dobby, traumatising all teenagers even more than Justin Bieber’s international success. It is all I can do to repeat these words:
J.K. Rowling, I was fine when you said that Harry's parents were dead. Fine, when you killed Sirius. Okay, when you killed Hedwig and Mad-Eye. A little mad when you killed Dumbledore. BUT YOU CROSSED THE LINE BY KILLING DOBBY!!!!!!!!!!
Photos copyright to: blogspot.com, csupueblotoday.com, imdb.com, independent.co.uk, tumblr.com, wordpress.com.
that last paragraph there, amen to that!
ReplyDelete