Overly melodramatic at times, a roller coaster ride with highs, and lows, but very little middle ground.

Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2010)

I confess. I read the book about a dozen times in the past few years. It's not like I don't do anything else, but I do. In a year, I probably get through about 25-30 books. So reading HP and the DH was just something I was enjoying. There are clues in various places in the books, and you just have to marvel at how Jo Rowling tied up all the ends so nicely in the last one.
The one thing, though, that I felt was off in 7 was how she portrayed Hagrid. In a few cases, it seemed like she was treating him like a buffoon, but that's a personal opinion, not something that critically could be considered wrong with the book.
But the last book kept elements close together. It brought in all the old characters, added a few new ones, but basically held together things with bonds of steel. The relationships were both old and new, with a true feeling of family and friendships. And we all celebrated the good times in the book and lamented the bad times.
So when Mad-Eye Moody gets killed so early in the book, a feeling of loss goes with him. When Fleur is so happy to be marrying Bill, we're all happy for them both. When we see Kreacher turn from a foul house-elf to a fine house-servant, we're happy for him. When Tonks tells us she is pregnant, we celebrate! But almost none of that is in the movie. We know instinctively that those things happened in the book, but if you haven't read them, you're going to go WTF? an awful lot.
Mad-Eye is killed in the chase, but there isn't a toast to this memory. When Fleur is so intense about the wedding, we see no real emotion, but for one brief moment. When the trio leaves Kreacher for their exploits at the ministry, we have no idea how much he has changed. And when Tonks and Lupin go off, there is nothing to suggest the very sad and aching love they have for each other, and about Remus's hesitation about his upcoming fatherhood.
There is no investment in these characters in the film. It's like "strip the souls from everyone but Ron, Harry and Hermione, make the others more melodramatic with no attachment to the real story, and voilà! you have Deathly Hallows Part One." I confess: I don't like David Yates' direction. There has been something off about it since OOTP, though I might be one of the few who think that. I think his often amateurish direction is quite obvious in this film. The film is often like a roller coaster, with giddy high points, either in the action or the tone, but there are also many very low points, and there is nothing in the middle. We don't LEARN anything from the characters--we follow them on their journey, yes, but we have to inject too much of the overall plot from the book to see what has been left out, and what is still present. There are times when a collage filming of the many places the trio (and in the middle, the duo) went could get that section speeded up without weighing it down (a friend with me found the middle WAY too slow), and at times, a more polished director could have found ways to make the scenes pack a lot more information into them. It certainly didn't look like the kids weren't eating a whole lot, or how much Hermione actually fit into her small pocketbook. The scene that could have managed that would have been the scene in the book where Hermione packs the full sized painting of Sirius Black's relative, Phinea Black, former headmaster of Hogwarts, into her bag. But it was not to be.
I think if there had been a consistent tone during the film, it would have helped bring a more cohesive tone to the film, interlocking all the elements into one. But there wasn't that kind of a feeling in it, and I am disappointed that it didn't happen.
I might be one of the very few fans who feels the film wasn't a very good one. Yes, it's only half of a whole, and the second half might be a totally different one, emotionally, and dramatically. But I just need to say to fans, go with the warning that there are a lot of faults with this installment, and accept it just as a nice visual film, with very, very little to do with the entire HP legacy. It probably won't help, and you will be filling in the blanks from the books, but it's certainly better than nothing.