Surprise: This is NOT a Harry Potter movie

Rating: 4/10 (20 November 2010)

This is not a Harry Potter movie. It is a movie that has characters with the same names and faces but they are in an alternative universe, one created by David Yates starting in movie 5. In that universe, all the themes and ideas developed in the book-based Harry Potter mythology are gone. In its place is a story about an individual boy wizard and his teen friends. What happened to the great choices Harry has to make, like does he go after the Horcruxes as Dumbledore instructed or does he get sidetracked looking for the Deathly Hallows? Horcruxes are thrown in as a McGuffin, an excuse to take a group camping trip rather than as the key to the whole mystery: how do you destroy evil without destroying yourself. The Hallows are the great temptation that the animation in this movie beautifully suggests but then they are completely ignored for the rest of the movies. Remember that Dumbledore and Gregorovich once had a notion of "The Greater Good" and that idea did not die with the end of their friendship. Dumbledore tried to teach Harry that what he was doing was not for himself, it was for the greater good of all beings, not just pure-bloods, and certainly not just for teenagers. Okay, did you get any of this from this movie? NO, because it has all been washed out of the story and replaced with silly teen anxieties and individual relationships. How very sad.