WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, YOU’D BETTER HAVE YR PERMITS IN ORDER

Then:




Now:




Because the law is the law, kids. And don’t you EVER forget it.

Oh well, there’s always computer games.



It’s just business,

This is dF

THE LAST HARRY POTTER REVIEW YOU’LL EVER NEED

The Harry Potter™ films are a done deal, and yes, I saw Part 7.2, and rather than write a review of that film, I thought I’d write a review of the entire film series.

And why not, Jim? After all, we’re basically talking about a single film divided into eight (8) parts.

I should start by mentioning that I have read all the books, which means the films may have made more sense to me than to people who haven’t. With the exception of the first film (which was based on the shortest book of the series), all of the HP films are essentially the Cliff Notes versions of the books, which means a lot of stuff is missing and the rest is jammed into close to 2.5 hours of footage, which also means that everyone apart from the main three characters and that year’s Dark Arts teacher gets about five minutes of screen time per film.

Put another way, my assumption is that the films make more sense if you’ve read the books than if you haven’t, which is a weakness right there. The other weakness, of course, is that if you’ve read the books, you already know where it’s all going and how it ends. We were never going to get an HP movie “loosely based on the book by JK Rowling”.

Aside from that, it’s been interesting watching the film series morph from kid-friendly fantasy to something altogether darker, not just with the rise of Voldemort, but also the totalitarian imagery as the Ministry Of Magic succumbs to fear well before it falls under the power of Voldemort’s hench-wizards. If it wasn’t for the growing pains/teen-romance melodrama that tended to slow down films 4 through 6, you’d have something pretty powerful here.

Anyway, for my money And The Prisoner Of Azkaban remains the best film (and book) of the series. Director Alfonso Cuaron did a good job capturing the darker side of the HP universe whilst giving it a weird storybook feel. That said, And The Deathly Hallows (Parts 1 and 2) brings the series to a reasonably dark and epic conclusion, even if it does start looking a bit like Lord Of The Rings in places (to include all the walky bits in Part 1).

All up, the HP films are what they are – megabudget entertainment cashing in on one of the most successful book series ever – but if nothing they do add up to a fairly unique slice of cinematic history, which Warner Brothers will discover to its detriment as it tries to find a bankable franchise that can match the series’ success. John Scalzi has a good list of reasons why they're likely to fail.

The end,

This is dF