Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)

The end of an era is upon us. The last Harry Potter film is out, and if all goes well, I'll be seeing it tomorrow. One problem: this is "part 2" and I haven't seen "part 1"! Until tonight that is! Yes, I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 today and I hope I'm sufficiently ready for whatever Part 2 has in store for me. For the sake of transparency, I should clarify what my history with the franchise is. I've never read any of the Potter books, but I have seen all the previous films. I've only seen 1 of them in the theater, the one with the werewolf, the rest I saw at home on DVD or on TV. Now that that's out of the way, the question at hand is if I liked this movie, and am I now hyped beyond all belief to see Deathly Hallows Part 2?


Basically the story is the same as all the other Harry Potter movies: evil wizards are after Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and they must use all their magical trickery to get through the day. Actually, Deathly Hallows Part 1 does have quite a complicated story which carries on from the previous film, which carries on from the one before that, and so on. The evil Lord Voldemort, played by Ralph Fiennes, is basically immortal, unless Harry and his friends can find these items called Horcruxes. There's 7 in total, and in the last movie 2 of them were destroyed. They now have a 3rd, but no matter what they do it doesn't seem possible to even scratch it. The goal of this film is to find out how to do that, while at the same time staying ahead of the bad guys who are constantly after them.

The fun of the Harry Potter series, for me, has always been the enchanted school and always finding some new mystical and magical part of this fantastical world to see. In one film it might be Mandrakes, in another it could be evil half-dead looking winged horses that only eat raw meat. In another it might be a cloak that makes you completely invisible. Giant spiders, to elves, to mermaids, to Cerberus himself! The imagination is the limit it seems. Sadly, it's that element of whimsy and wonder that seems to be largely lacking in this film. Most of the magical stuff they show you is either just some special effects show, or things we've already seen in the many previous Harry Potter films. There just didn't seem to be any of that originality that filled the others.

So if I'm not mistaken... I don't care what's going on in this scene at all!

Even after saying that though, those "special effects shows" as I called them did at least look pretty great. The magic blasts and apartment buildings that open up like an accordion to reveal an extra flat, those evil looking dead horses and the potions that change your appearance into someone else all looked great. Too bad I've seen it all before.

The only other thing left in the movie is a long, tedious, boring camping trip in the woods as they try to figure out how to destroy the Horcrux they have in their possession. They can look like anything, and this one happens to be a locket which seems to act like The One Ring from Lord of the Rings in that it makes whoever wears it to slowly become hostile and argumentative. This just means that for a very long part of a 2 1/2 hour movie, we get to watch Harry, Ron, and Hermione bicker and throw tantrums.

So when can we get back to the fun?

I should also point out that a character (several really) dies in the film. I won't spoil it, but it did have a big scene. If I'm to be honest here, I really didn't give a crap about it. The character was always annoying and the effects always were some of the worst in the whole franchise. I'm glad he's gone.

I can't lie to myself. I thought this was a straight-up bad movie. Pretty much nothing happens other than very slow plodding character development which doesn't develop much at all, and I guess they do manage to eventually smash that one Horcrux. That leaves 4 more, which I guess they'll just whip through now that they know how to destroy them, even though they could be anything, anywhere on the entire planet. I'm hoping one of them is a grain of sand in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Good luck with that one! My hopes are pretty low for Deathly Hallows Part 2 after seeing this one. I'm hoping the magical fights are more impressive on the big screen, and that there's more magical fights period. I'm pretty certain this will be my most disliked HP film out of them all. I hope I don't regret it all tomorrow.