Should have done much better, an insult to Rowling and the fans!

Rating: 2/10 (30 July 2011)

There are an awful lot of reviews talking about how this film is 'the best yet' and how it 'ticks all the boxes' or is 'a must for fans'. It is none of these!
7 years ago I walked out of watching the 3rd film cursing and swearing out loud about how poor the conversion of book to film had been done. Scenes dropped and changed for 'time considerations' whilst others were invented and thrust in- all creating plot holes that did not exist in the novel.
This time I walked out praying that I live long enough to see someone take the books and redo the ENTIRE series properly, using the obvious failures done in the films to date as a road map for improvement.
**SPOILERS**
It is, unfortunately, near impossible to give a proper review of this film without including at least some spoilers. Whilst one can make generic statements such as 'divergence from source material is too great', 'plot holes cause a lack of integrity' and 'over editing leads to a lack of connection to the characters' none of it means too much without going into at least a little detail.
Simple things such as not showing the death of Fred, despite having gone into George's injury so well in part 1, or the massively powerful and indestructible Elder Wand being snapped in half with little to no effort whatsoever are good examples. Bellatrix's wand was more durable for god's sake!
Meanwhile, having just spent an entire previous film searching for Horcruxes they suddenly jump from finding one in the form of a cup based on logical deduction to guessing where the next one is on what appears to be a whim. For the sake of taking 90 seconds of screen time to mention that the ring was Slytherin's and the goblet was Hufflepuff's, and it would seem logical for Voldemort's ego to have a desire to stamp his dark magic on a legendary item for each of the 4 founders- therefore Ravenclaw would be a good place to look next- instead Yate's goes and has the characters make a crazy leap of logic for which they need to endanger their lives with no apparent reason behind it whatsoever. This is storytelling of the lowest calibre!
These things aren't just failures to adapt the book correctly when to do so would have been better than making alteration, they are basic failures of storytelling that any student on a film or writing course would have lost marks on if it were an assignment. These plot holes, discontinuities, omissions and alienations are in such great number that if it were an assignment it would, in fact, have been lucky to scrape through with a D as a result!
No doubt we will see the score of this film drop over time as more and more people- particularly on 2nd watching, or seeing it for the first time on an average size TV or ten years from now when special effects technology has moved on- find the imagery far less awe inspiring than the films flaws. At that point the realisation will kick in that this is actually a very poor rendition of the source material that almost any hack director could have put out just as well if not better with the budget and cast/crew available to hand.