The worst Harry Potter film so far

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2010)

Is it part art film? I'd say yes, in the better parts, it had something wise and melancholy going for it, rather like the book, but it was lost all too easily to the infrequent action sequences which neither impress nor lend any forward motion, aside from a particular part of the Bagshot/Nagini sequence making the audience jump a couple feet, and all without Voldemort. Meh.
Alterations to the plot were generally as bad as they've been in the past, but the Lovegood house was so very poorly done, it rates special mention. It well and truly sucked. (I wondered if there had been some technical difficulties with the editing, it was so bad.) Most of the emotional scenes are strangely unmoving. Hermione's torture becomes something weirdly camp - Tim Burtonish, if you will - with no power to unsettle. The much anticipated horcrux destruction scene lacks any sort of nuance at all, so much so that Ron's resigned remark at the end of it falls as flat as a bassoon. Hermione looked like an airbrushed NY fashion house mascot, and Harry looked like plastic, with some silvery gloss smudged on. It was hokey, and I felt embarrassed watching it.
There were other bothersome things (the list could go on) - the whole imprisonment scene was horrid, rushed and thoughtless, and the basement itself looked like they were in some half-finished suburban ground floor, only thing missing was a couch, a TV and some paneling. Olivander looked far healthier than he did in the first film, Luna was an afterthought, Wormtail was apparently lulled to sleep by general uneventfulness, and Dobby looked like a wax figure moved by strings. Bellatrix was about as scary as The Count from Sesame Street, the snatchers behaved like the three stooges, and the confrontation at the end had all the movement drained from it, arranged instead like a lazy, half-hearted family portrait, just so they could end it with a hokey special effect that didn't work - the knife turning to jelly or something in the whirlwind of apparation. Dobby's death was atrociously handled, Luna spoke far too soon, and the burial was filmed in the blandest possible way.
The story was told in a linear way, and the camera work was too, which resulted in a very one dimensional film. The burial scene, for example, could have had a shot threw the window, with Hermione on the couch, Ron beside her, and Harry in the background or something - it would have taken no more time, but it would have filled the world better. Anything to vary the 1, 2, 3 of the telling.
The Story of the Three Brothers animation was very cool, and strange as it may seem to say it, Emma Watson's acting is almost the best thing about the film.
I liked the arty parts, but everything else is trash.
The film needed a new director and a new writer. I fear for part two very much now.