Movie Review - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two (2011)

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, and Alan Rickman

Directed by David Yates

All I can say is that I'm happy the Harry Potter saga is over and done with so I can now never have to watch another moment of this boring fantasy series again.  It's not that any of the movies are godawful, but considering these flicks are supposed to be trips to a fantastical world of magic and sorcery there is a severe lack of creativity and joy onscreen in any of these films.

Picking up immediately where the bland Part One left off, Part Two of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a showdown between Mr. Potter and the evil Voldemort.  I'm not going to get into any additional story description because it all boils down to Good vs. Evil and it's likely not going to be a surprise as to who comes out the victor.  

As stated above, the problem with all of these Potter films is that they all simply seem much too cookie cutter and by the book.  Directors (with the exception of Alfonso Cuarón's take on Prisoner of Azkaban, the third flick in the series) all seem to lack the imagination to make this cinematic series successful and David Yates is no exception.  As a director, he's responsible for not only making the film visually appealing (which this isn't), but also making the film flow...and this film doesn't do that either.

Granted, I think Yates certainly would have been helped had the film been released as a single flick rather than be forced to be stretched out into two parts.  As much as I would have hated the experience, I would have rather had a three hour-and-fifteen minute flick as opposed to 2 two hour films.  Presented in the way they were released, I couldn't help but feel like the editor had to leave stuff in just to pad the running time.

I will say that Daniel Radcliffe whom I criticized in my review of Part One proved to be rather good in this final installment of the series.  This second film is purely his with many the other characters including Emma Watson's Hermione and Rupert Grint's Ron pushed more to the outskirts.  Rather surprisingly, Radcliffe proves that he may well have a career now that his decade as Harry Potter is over.

Take my review of this one with a grain of salt.  This series just never worked for me and although I saw all of them in theaters, they never once transported me into the magical, mystical world of J.K. Rowling's best-selling series.  With the exception of a pleasant theme by film composer John Williams, there's really nothing worth remembering about the Harry Potter series in the slightest.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One (2010)

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Ralph Fiennes

Directed by David Yates

I realize that the seventh and final book of the Harry Potter series was long, but, while whoever thought of separating the final film into two parts was a financial genius, the split causes Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One to be a tremendously boring film that fails on all fronts.  When it finally picks up the pace and actually gets going in the film's final thirty minutes, it's too little too late to redeem itself.

The gist of the whole thing:  Teenage wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) has to find some magic objects and destroy them before the evil Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) gets a hold of them and gains a bunch of power.  Potter's friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are going to help him.

That's it.  Except for the fact that what's listed above is even more than what happens in the film.  I mention that Potter has to find some magic "objects" with an emphasis on the plural there.  Well, he actually only finds one object...in 150 minutes.  Two-and-a-half hours and he finds one frickin' object.  This intrepid quest really goes nowhere for this whole movie.  Instead, we get a bunch of shots of Harry standing around with Hermione and Ron, all of them looking really sad and worried.  There's no arc to the story and not a bit of an emotional arc with the characters.

Let's face it -- Daniel Radcliffe isn't a great actor.  He's rather awkward as Potter and he's not the least bit interesting to watch.  This has always been the case with Radcliffe throughout all the films, so I'm not sure why I was expecting anything different here.  The biggest problem, however, is that in this film Radcliffe is in nearly every single scene.  In the previous flicks, we'd at least cut away (maybe) to a little Ron or Hermione side adventure...and Rupert Grint and Emma Watson could at least hold our attention because of their charisma.  Here, even Grint and Watson are just dreary.  I realize these characters are facing some deadly and dire situations, but there was hardly a smile cracked onscreen the whole time.

David Yates is a more than adequate director and the most positive aspect of the film is the rather adult, simplistic way it's shot.  However, he (and his cinematographer) bathe the film in dreary dank blues and grays.  It's really not even a pretty film to look at despite some rather interesting settings.

All this being said, I was intrigued by the film's final half hour which utilized some very clever animation techniques to tell the backstory of the Deathly Hallows (this scene was the only one that really worked for me).  Ultimately, Part One ended on enough of a positive note to make me interested in knowing the outcome of Part Two.  However, this film should never have been broken up into two parts -- it's a move that will ultimately taint my decision of Deathly Hallows as a whole regardless of how much I like the final act.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+