The same-old same-old

Rating: 6/10 (25 November 2005)

I guess it's too late to replace Daniel Radcliffe, but from the beginning he was never a compelling on screen presence, and that's a shame. The owlish Harry Potter deserves an edge Ratcliffe simply does not possess. So, every Potter movie including this one seems to have involved spinning some very expensive plates to distract us from this fact. Here are the best special effects money can buy (the Quidditch match is the set piece and is the most satisfying), some rather disconcerting sexual innuendo about Harry's belongings in a bath house, Ralph Fiennes as the evil version of the English Patient (wow, that must have hurt his nose), and the dawning realization that purely through an accident of birth, Harry Potter will prevail over every evil that befalls him. For some reason I find this depressing rather than inspiring. It must go back to my proud American notion that you are not born into greatness, you much create it. Whereas in England, you're stuck for life.