2 Films for 1 Book, yet misses 1/4 of the story....

Rating: 6/10 (12 July 2011)

I don't know what I was expecting... To be honest apart from the first HP movie... every single one of the following movies has left out major plot points, characters and story lines. I guess I figured that was mainly because the movies only have a certain length of time to tell the story. Thus it was natural for me to assume that with 5+ hours they would be able to include everything in the one book... I assumed wrongly.
First off - Do not see this in 3D... The 3D is an after thought and literally added nothing to the experience. The only scene that was 3D that stands out in memory was the death of Voldemort and his confetti explosion.
What did they get right? Well its hard to say really.. I was really disappointed with the pacing for the first half of the 2nd part. It felt slow and weird and anti-climatic the entire way. The bank scene and special effects seems average and low budget for a franchise with such high profits. The acting from everyone doesn't quite do the job. Snapes "redemption" scene was acted out really poorly by Alan Rickman.. which is a shame because I was really looking forward to it as it's one of the more moving parts in the series. The only scene that felt like it mirrored the book accurately was the Kings Cross section (apart from Harry having clothes on...) My main gripe with the movie is that they left out so much considering they had two movies to cover it. Harry telling Neville to kill the snake and thus Neville having and important role in the ending of the war <- This part was the ONE part I was looking forward to when Neville pulls the sword out of the hat and cuts Nagini in two... Yet they changed it to Hermione and Ron battling the snake and Neville coming in as an afterthought... The entire war at the end was missing - Centaurs, Goblins/Kreecher, Hagrid/Aragog and just felt very anti-climatic and also have very poor CGI. The entire point of the Deathly Hallows is missed out with Harry not claiming ownership of the wand and reflecting Voldemorts death spell back onto him, and is replaced with a VERY tame action scene that went for about 10 minutes (its then mentioned as an afterthought by Harry post battle). The scene when Harry confronts Snape was also bizarre and seemed unnecessary... Overall the changes and missing scenes left me feeling very empty.
My girlfriend hasn't read the books and she enjoyed it.. So I'm sitting here wondering if the knowledge of the books hampered my enjoyment of it. I have no doubt this film will be hailed a success and will make bazillon dollars, but I can't help but feel that another director/team could've handled this a lot truer to the books.