ENTERTAINMENT

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part II: Extraordinary or Ordinary?

Reviewed by Tanya, age 14, Alabama

On July 15th, the Harry Potter saga roller-coasted to its epic ending, arousing millions of fans worldwide to get together for the young wizard's confrontation with the Dark Lord, Voldemort. It goes without saying that the hype created was full throttle. Hard core fans fawned over the legendary battle sequence and gushed gallons worth of tears over the finale. However, it all left me saying ... What?

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part II wasn't what it was said to be. A vast part of the literary dialogues were thrown out of the movie and left many a person bamboozled and stunned over every other scene. Of course, without the dialogue and clarification, many people had to wait until the end of the movie to find out what "hallow" actually means! Even without the dialogues, the actors' emotions couldn't reach out to us. I think that the battle sequences could have been filmed more spectacularly, not to mention without shaky hands. The emotional pieces and quiet self-reflective moments were not as heart wrenching as one would have expected.

Perhaps due to the fact that the movie was split into two there was a lot of time on hand, and the movie almost waltzed to its ending since the extra time wasn't filled in and no one had any clue how to fill it. When Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released, there was a lot of information cut out of it, but it still rocked the box office and people loved it. The easy charm that the earlier movies used to captivate their fans isn't present in this movie at all and it seems to have lost the original sense of excitement from seven movies earlier. A lot of the magic that is unique to Harry Potter is sadly left behind and could not satisfy scores of people, many of whom are die-hard Harry Potter fans.

When it comes to the actors, all they used to do is attend classes and mysteriously end up in a dangerous situation at the end of the day. Now that school's out and the adult world is suddenly darker, all they do is run and duck. The tediousness of the movie doesn't let us concentrate on the ever-evolving and growing actors, as they seem to lose themselves in their characters as Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but they can't seem to project the emotions on their grime-coated faces. We can't seem to connect with them like we were able to in the earlier films (and they don't make an effort either, really).

No one is going to be able to convince you to watch or not watch the final Harry Potter, but, hey, if you want my opinion, go watch it, but don't bother watching it in IMAX 3D, because it's absolutely not worth it. There is only about 15 minutes worth of 3D in the entire movie, and even that is not going to pop out at you no matter how hard they try.

I have read all the books, so I understood everything, and though there wasn't any time for hand-holding or waiting with bated breath moments, the movie left me strangely unfulfilled. As it all ended and the credits started rolling, all I could think was millions of readers, thousands of pages, and this is all we get?

Anything more could have been magic. It surely isn't the amazing sendoff we all had imagined, but it's not exactly a failure either. If this is the best they can give us, then so be it because Pottermania will go on, if not through the last movie, then at least through all the books.

I give Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part II 2 stars (of a possible 5).

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