Assimilated to Hollywood standards

Rating: 6/10 (19 July 2011)

If you like overambitious special effect based event cinema with 3D animations and a lot of epic sounds, you will surely adore this movie and think that it is a perfect ending to the series and final highlight for the whole family. Anybody that tends to look a little bit beyond commercial Hollywood cinema and prefers something more profound and intellectual might get a rather negative surprise after so many overrated positive reviews from the fan boys on this site.
This movie has so many negative points that I don't know where to begin. First of all, I might chose the characters and the acting. I remember reading the last three hundred pages of the final novel was an emotional and touching thing and I wasn't able to put the book aside. I had tears in my eyes when some of the characters were struggling in their battles, losing all hope and ultimately even dying in some cases. In the movie, this all seems so secondary that it's a dishonour to the actors and a decade of more or less touching attempts to recreate the magic of the novels. Many tragic fates, last breaths and deadly conclusions are just side notes to fill a whole in between two overwhelming battle scenes with many artificially flavoured special effects. That's what I call a shame and a lack of subtlety from the production team and especially the director. Everything is concentrated on Harry Potter that there is almost no place for the other actors to shine. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger play no important role and even the main character's girlfriend Ginny Weasley has only a few insignificant passages. It seems as if this was a movie about the one and only Harry Potter and the other characters only had cameo appearances for the memories of old glory and older movies with much more equilibrium, depth and magic. The only characters that were able to shine next to Harry Potter were Neville Longbottom and Severus Snape. Even Lord Voldemort had a ridiculous and childish megalomaniac attitude while Albus Dumbledore seemed surprisingly arrogant to me.
Another annoying aspect were the reoccurring cheap attempts on childish puns. Each time there was a dramatic or dark scene, any of the characters said something stupid or ridiculous. Well, many people laughed in the cinemas but it was more a hesitating chain reaction and nothing funny or appropriated to the situation. We don't need any simplistic jokes in the darkest and most gripping parts of the Harry Potter universe just to satisfy the youngest generations and avoid harsher critics from angry parents who may complain that their seven year old daughters had nightmares after watching this movie. The Harry Potter novels had evolved alongside the age of its characters and they had become more mature, dark and serious. This last movie breaks this progression down and tries to return to some light entertainment for the whole family.
Many things in the movie were truly predictable and not because I had read the novel. The speech of Neville Longbottom for example was filled with so much kitsch that I rather had to laugh out and shake my head than to feel touched by it. The comments by Albus Dumbledore were predictable and as unclear and imprecise as always but this time with a quite arrogant and bored touch in it. The annoying paranoid curses of Lord Voldemort against his enemies and especially Harry Potter were repeated to much and limited the character to a rather one-dimensional, clueless and predictable personality. The characterizations of the different personalities were underlined and stretched in a stereotypical way but not lifted on a higher level as the novel did.
Another important point was the lack of depth in the movie. Only the scenes around Severus Snape were great but still far away from the novel's quality. We don't get to know more about the main villain and his horcruxes. What about the background story of Albus Dumbledore? What about the details surrounding Teddy Lupin? What happened with Percy Weasley and his decisions? What about the deeper and matured romantic relationships between Harry and Ginny or Ron and Hermione? What about the new connection between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy? If you decide to cut the last novel into two movies, please do it properly at least.
Don't get me wrong, the whole thing is entertaining and a funny popcorn cinema ride but it lacks of depth and something truly outstanding. The movie doesn't have this little glimpse of magic and subtle emotion that the novel had. Where Peter Jackson almost equalled the original "Lord of the Rings" novels, David Yates is far away from only getting near to it. The biggest surprise of the movie was that at the end of this superficial commercial entertainment, there wasn't written "directed by James Cameron" in the credits. This movie is comparable to his last works like "Sanctum" or "Avatar". The last "Transformers" and "Narnia" movies are also horribly close to this last Harry Potter movie. I am honestly shocked that a British novel has been transformed into a copy of Hollywood's actual standards. The movie doesn't have the British soul of the novels. I honestly preferred the earliest movies of the series. The whole thing got stretched and over-hyped too much. One should have made one single final movie about three hours, cut out the boring lack of events in the first part and the overwhelming special effects and childish jokes of the second one to fusion the whole thing into a more equilibrated and human mixture with a few additional background scenes. That would have made less money and got less popularity but would have been closer to the novel in order to honour a legendary piece of art in a significant way. The unsatisfying final result may not be the actors' or fans' fault but the studio's and director's mistake.