Ehhhh...

Rating: Null/10 (16 July 2011)

(I apologize for any misspellings of character names in advance.) I grew up with Harry and the gang. I spent my evenings waiting at the bookstore until Midnight, eagerly expecting the next book of the series. I wasn't disappointed. I cried at the end of the 7th book; I expected to do the same at the end of the 8th movie.
I walked into the theater with 10 misty-eyed buddies, three boxes of Kleenex, and expectations high (I loved the 7th movie.) I walked out of the theater with 10 confused buddies, three unused boxes of Kleenex, and a feeling of slight disappointment.
What went wrong??? The Good: Gringotts was flawless. Loved everything about it.
Neville, Professor McGonagal, and Mrs. Weasely were awesome in every sense of the word. Their moments of epic earned well-deserving applause and standing ovations from the audience.
Snape's death. I never react to movies, but I gasped and grabbed my friend when he was killed. Only time I got tearful through out the whole film. Perfection.
Battle of Hogwarts. With a few exceptions (you'll read those later) it was well done.
And now....the bad.
Tonks and Lupin. Their whole 'we have a son' thing was really random and shoved in. How the heck did Harry know? He was traipsing around the countryside! Very confusing.
Dumbledore. His back story, his acting...I'm sorry, the guy was terrible. Him and Harry was an awful moment for everyone, regardless if you read the books or not.
Fred's death was way too underplayed. I don't know if they were shooting for the "oh, he's just one amongst many' thing, but I was disappointed. You couldn't even tell it was Fred! It could've been Percy or Bill for all they showed!
The Snape/Lily Montage. It was cute....for the first 10 minuets. Then I all I could think was "Can we speed this along, please?" It was awkward and lengthy. I'm all for showing the soft underbelly of grouchy semi-evil Snape, but suddenly throwing a weeping, puppy dogged eyed Snape who moons after Lily for, like, ever, was a 3000 degree character turn-around and ruined his character for me. Too much, too fast.
There were several other moments of "Well, that was disappointing" or "Whoa, that was amazing!", but those were the big ones.
The bad moments were equaled out by the good....for the most part. The HP saga ended on a decent note, but it was not the tear-jerking awesomeness that I was expecting.