Good, But Very Anti-climatic

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2011)

Let me start out by saying that I am an absolute avid Harry Potter fan. I became addicted to the books when The Goblet of Fire was released when I was around 10 years old. Since then, I have probably read all of the books but the last two a good 20+ times. I love Harry Potter.
When I heard about Harry Potter movies being released and not being split into 2 parts, I was very down in the dumps because I knew a lot of important information regarding the story line was going to be overlooked due to it not fitting into the ~ 2 hours allotted to the movie. Needless to say, the first 6 movies came out, and while I enjoyed them for what they were, I was very disappointed in some of the information that was cut out.
When I heard about the Deathly Hallows being a 2 part release, I jumped and screamed for joy because I told myself "Surely they can't cut anything out in nearly 5 hours worth of movietime!"
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
While reading the books I was very in tune with all the characters; I (nearly) cried when Sirius died, then Hedwig, I was sad when George lost his ear, I cried my heart out when I flew through the 6th book and read about Dumbledore dying.
Now onto this movie, I thought it was very in detail, yet the connection to the characters that you get when you read the book just wasn't there in this movie. I felt no remorse when Lupin or Fred died because I've barely seen them all movie. Also, if you did not avidly read the books, you will not understand why Harry came back to life after being killed with the 'killing curse'.
While a lot of the scenes in this movie are very pretty and well done, I think the action could have used quite a bit of work. When Mrs. Weasley killed Bellatrix, you had no idea that Bellatrix was dueling 3 people before that, one of them being Ginny, and that was why that happened.
I guess this is a bit long drawn out and I just like to nit pick at a lot of the smaller details, but for 4-5 hours worth of movie, I feel like the last 30 minutes or so lacked a LOT of content. Voldemort should have died in the Great Hall with a ring of people watching after Harry give a speech to Tom Riddle, not this silliness of falling off a building and flying around.
I am more disappointed in the lack of following the book to the exact letter than anything else; for while since content was left out, the story was much shallower than it deserved.
J.K. Rowling deserves better than this, I sincerely hope that they filmed an extended version with a lot of the missing scenes and with better action scenes.
And that concludes my long drawn out ramble of a review. I give it a 6/10 with a few stars taken off for important content being forgotten, lack of connectedness with the characters, and weak action scenes.