Great cast . . .

Rating: 1/10 (3 December 2010)

. . . for the most part wasted. Bill Nighy has about 5 minutes of screen time, Robbie Coltrane maybe 10 minutes, Ralph Fiennes perhaps 15. Trailing along are Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson, Rhys Ifans and Alan Rickman with perhaps 3 minutes each, David Thewlis with 2 minutes and Timothy Spall with about the same. Helena Bonham Carter probably has 10 minutes and only over-acts for 8 of them.
Instead of concentrating on this galaxy of stars we spend most of the time sitting in the mountains with Harry and Hermione suffering a lot of angst or sitting in the mountains with Harry, Hermione and Ron suffering a lot of angst. As a break from the mountains we get time sitting in the forest with Harry and Hermione suffering a lot of angst, or sitting in the forest with Harry, Hermione and Ron suffering . . . well you get the picture. There is, in fact, so much angst in this movie it should have been made in Swedish with English sub-titles.
The problem with angst is that it's . . . well . . . boring.
Then there are things that simply don't lead anywhere - Harry has a snog with Ginny Weasley, but he doesn't follow through. He has a dance with Hermione (in between spurts of angst) but he doesn't follow through on that either. OK, this is Harry Potter, so we don't expect shower scenes, but can Harry actually lift his wand? I think we should be told.
The "love" scenes may be anti-climactic - but then so are the action scenes. For example: woman inexplicably changes into a snake - snake attacks Harry but retreats after (shock! horror!) biting a chair leg. Something funny going on with Harry and the snake - is this another metaphor? There is no plot aside from . . . did I mention lots of angst? The best part of this film: the credits. I didn't think I'd see a film worse than Robin Hood this year - David Yates has directed one.
P.S. Why did Dumbledore die? - because he wanted to avoid being in this.