Substance...with flash

Rating: 9/10 (12 July 2007)

It was a joy, an absolute joy to see the main characters of Harry Potter depicted with some gravity. For four films (yes I did say all four)these young actors have had "the emotional range of a teaspoon" and largely through no fault of their own. Hollywood has a continual and annoying trend of equating fantasy with one dimensional, frequently paring their characters down to one and two word descriptions (i.e. hero, comic relief, girl power, wimp) that erodes them into nothing more than black/white,cardboard,stick people spiced up with a little humor. Not so with David Yates. Here, in this fifth installment, we are all of a sudden faced with people: Real people. They are full blown, colorful, effective. They remind you, on the eve of the last book of the series, how much you actually like Harry and how much you really want him to win this battle against Voldemort...somehow. This could not have been accomplished without Daniel Radcliffe's heartfelt performance. I don't care how much quidditch was added or whether Snape's memory was longer. Without substance this movie simply would have been a flash in the pan. It did not need more special effects, it did not need to be darker, it didn't even necessarily need the swamp. What it needed was the one thing all four movies have not been able to produce; acting that was befitting the characters and respectful of the work it came from. David Yates pulled that off in spades.