Harry Potter & The Half-Good Prints

In recovery from a long road trip and needing to escape my telephone, I took the Weedlets to the latest HP yesterday. I love the books but am not a fan of the flicks, as I've said before.

This one's beautifully shot and includes some big, scary waves --always a plus to my mind. However, I find I can't enjoy any film when I'm tired, which I was, so my overarching reaction was: will this ever end? Which could be either keen judgment or exhaustion talking, so I'll tell you what the Weedlets thought instead. As always, these were their initial thoughts, given out of ear-range of each other to avoid influence.

Eldest Weed: Cool special effects in the opening scenes, but worst movie I've ever seen in my life, exceeding Prince Caspian in awfulness.

I don't know whether we can call this artistic judgment, however. EW is a purist, unwilling to forgive the slightest deviation from the text. Plus there was (mild) snogging, which always offends him. He was further put out by Malfoy's emotionalism during his confrontation with Dumbledore, but as this is utterly true to the book, it probably says more about him. He's not ready to deal with tears or kissing yet. Which suits me fine.

Girl Weed: It was alright. I liked it, but it wasn't very satisfying. Plus, I was disappointed they didn't play the theme music more.

If you remember being a kid and seeing The Empire Strikes Back, that's precisely the experience of this flick, I think. Though I think there's no story arc to this film --it's more like a series of vignettes from the book-- the real problem is perhaps unavoidable: everything ends unresolved, sort of like not being allowed to see the final act of a play.

8-yr-old Weed: Cool special effects, but it was only okay.
5-yr-old Weed: It was fine. I didn't like it that there were so many scenes I couldn't see.

(Three times I covered the two littlest guys' eyes briefly.)

I believe Michael Gambon has allowed JK Rowling's "outing" of Dumbledore to color his performance here, which is too bad. It's very subtle and nothing I think kids would pick up on, but neither do I think I merely imagine it.