Dull, dull, dull

Rating: 1/10 (20 November 2010)

What a crap movie. Just returned from watching Happy Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's dull, long and boring.
It starts out looking interesting, and then they end up spending an hour in a tent doing nothing. There's a weak attempt at fleshing out the characters, but it's woeful.
The story is a mish-mash where nothing really happens. It's so badly put together. Oh, they destroy an horcrux, and find a sword, but it's so drawn out and boring. There's no adventure or excitement. All the interesting characters of the recent films vanish, and you're left with Potter, Granger and Weasley wandering about not really doing anything.
I thought maybe they'd use the extra time to develop the story, but they didn't. Or couldn't. Maybe the screenwriter wasn't good enough. Whatever the reason, he's turned out a pathetic piece of work. For instance *SPOILER AHEAD*, they say that the place Harry is hiding is well protected, and it would be "impractical" to attack him there, and then they just turn up and attack anyway and trash the place. I mean, hello?!
There's a few jokes and comic relief, which is welcome, although sparse. The best scene in the whole film is when they try to infiltrate the Ministry. Great acting by those involved, but once it's over it goes back to being limp and dull. Some action, although not much. The SFX isn't interesting. Death Eaters fly around etc, but that's about it.
As usual, it's pretty poorly scripted. I've enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, but they're badly written. They eschew actual narrative and just throw scenes at you with little or no set-up. They're not hard to follow, but you're just left wishing that they'd tried a little harder.
Well, in HP7 Part 1, they don't really try at all. It's obvious that they just want to make as much money as they can (as if the other 6 haven't been profitable enough), but this movie just sucked.
It's got some darker tones to it, as fitting with the progress of the other films, but it's a two torture scenes than any real foreboding menace.
1 out of 10 for the following reasons. Dull, with very little action. About 20 minutes of actual story all up. Way, way too long. They've stretched 90 minutes of film into 2.5 hours. The 90 minute film would've been great. The 2.5 hour film drags and drags and sucks and sucks. Finally, even knowing that it is just a blatant money grab, they didn't even give us a decent film. Poor effort all round. The director and writer should be ashamed of themselves.