Needed to be at least 15 minutes longer

Rating: 7/10 (13 July 2007)

This installment of Harry Potter is the first one in which the filmmakers trimmed away virtually every subplot that was present in the huge book upon which it is based; only the main plot is served. A good idea I think. But, even though they cut the plot(s) to the bone, the second half of the film still feels rushed. It is about at the halfway point that the clear, focused editing of the movie turns choppy, with one sequence following another with little or no transition; I kept expecting the characters to get cut off in mid-sentence, but that never actually happened.
Also, this HP, though generally very high in quality, suffers from the same lack of clarity that has afflicted each of the films in the series since the unjustly maligned first two installments. The director of the first two, Chris Columbus, was bashed by some for creating a simplistic, Disney-ish version of the Potter stories. There may be a little truth to that, but there's also something that no one credits him for--clarity. There is not a single moment in either of the first two films where anyone in the audience could have been heard asking another one "What just happened?" The films since the first two have upped the sophistication level and pace considerably, but have in the process lost this clarity. For example in this most recent film I could hear people all around me asking each other questions about what they'd just seen, especially during the rushed second half. The editors don't seem to realize what story points need to be emphasized and made clear. For instance, kissing scene or no, the budding and then decaying relationship between Harry and Cho is played in such muted tones that many in the audience not familiar with the book were left wondering what was going on when things started to go bad. And Luna Lovejoy's last lines were so subtlety presented that my wife whispered to me "That went right past mewhat is she talking about?" The editors and screenwriters of the Potter films, tasked with condensing the increasingly gigantic novels into 2 hour films are falling into the trap of mistaking the mere dispensing of information with the telling of a story. Storytelling is about rhythm and flow, high points and quiet timesit's not about just lining all the bits and pieces up in neat, even rows.