Year: 2010
Starring: Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Directed By: David Yates
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 146 Minutes
I am not sure if there are many people out there that are thinking they aren't going to go see this movie. Actually I know who those people are, and they are the ones who refuse to read the books and think it is stupid. For those people I say to you, "Stop being lazy and read them." Here is the thing, for generations books have come and gone, but only a select few really remain and continue to flourish throughout the decades. We are living in that moment with these books. In 50 years, these books will still be getting the hype that they should. Twilight will not...there I said it. But for those of you who still won't read the books, but have seen all the movies, you will not be disappointed. Those of us who did read the books, you really won't be disappointed either, thankfully they broke this movie up into two parts, which I believe should have happened with more than just this movie.
It starts off in the same manner as many of the Harry Potter books. And like the books, this one is increasingly more dark than the others. These really aren't kids movies anymore, so if that is your excuse, you are wrong. And unlike the other films, this movie focuses primarily on Harry, Ron, and Hermione, with little involvement from the supporting characters (expect Part II to be heavy with supporting characters). Harry has to leave his house, and get to safety. Really well done sequence in the beginning, and really it is going to be hard to talk about it in this blog because for those of you who have not read the books, I don't want to ruin anything. In this movie, it is Harry, Ron, and Hermione searching for horcruxes that will help them in the battle with Lord Voldemort. We learned about this in the previous book/movie and learned that Dumbledore has figured out what some of them are and tasks Harry to find and destroy them all. As you can see from the title, this is only part one, and will end with no real resolution, so don't be confused when you walk out of the theatre. While I will not go into it much, I will give you my opinion on book to movie adaptation for this film.
The movie starts out fairly good to the book, there were some added scenes, but nothing that really made me question "why would they do that?" The movie follows the book very well, but does change some parts that I felt were unnecessary. For instance, the book used Polyjuice potion a lot, but the movie really limited it. It made some parts in the book more intriguing because Harry was someone else. They shortened some scenes and I feel added more jokes, but I could be wrong. I even thought there was a Twilight joke in the movie, but I can't remember if it was in the book or not. Maybe they did it for the screen, but you never know until you see an extended or deleted scene and see maybe it was a little too long. I can imagine though, the DVD/Blu Ray release will include an extended edition.
Overall, I give this movie 3.5 of 5 broken wands. Why broken wands? Go see the movie or read the book. It was a great movie, and I subtracted a half point solely because it is part one and leave you with a huge cliff hanger. I will be excited to see the next movie, but it is different to go into a movie knowing the ending. Really when I saw it, it was putting a picture to what I saw in my head when I read it. It was funny to hear people reacting in the movie as if they didn't know what was going on, but I count that to people who are unfamiliar with the books.
In case you missed my overall theme of this blog, read the books, you will be pleasantly surprised, and it always makes for great movie watching when you are comparing book to film adaptations. Trust me, they are great books.
TMBro
