It was with much excitement that we arrived a bit early at the opening-night midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. The atmosphere in line was, dare I say, magical.
Who am I kidding.
Much of the crowd’s vibe served one main purpose, which was to make me feel practically geriatric. This is a younger person’s story and a younger person’s film, and I was dutifully chaperoning my children to the event. Instead of the boy who lived, I was the old guy who stuck around. To their credit, the largely younger crowd was quite well behaved and I can’t recall even being annoyed. (“you damned kids get off my lawn!”)
The seating worked out very well (we had a very choice section) and the pre-film logistics worked out pretty well. No complaints there. We caught many a trailer, one in particular was the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, which really got the crowd excited. Had the trailer actually showed more than the title and some CGI, I probably would’ve been excited too I suppose. Not sure what all the hubbub was about. Then, the feature event finally started, prompting cheers and the raising of many dorkish wands of every variety (at least one such wand resourcefully made out of a screwdriver). So, how was it…
It was, in many ways, a solid and fitting end to what has been a very long series. Many of the main and exciting points from the book are played out, the effects and the acting are generally pretty good, and they even tossed in the epilogue at the end for a nice, nostalgic, light-hearted ending. That said, at just a shade over two hours of run-time, they could’ve probably pulled a Peter Jackson and stretched this out another half-hour or more. Some of the key plot points felt rather rushed, as there just wasn’t time to explain those a bit more and still make the final cut. I shouldn’t be spoiling anything for anyone (it’s in the trailer) to say that there were parts in the movie that were manufactured out of whole cloth. Harry grabbing Voldemort and leaping with him into the abyss? Yeah…that’s not in the book, unless we’ve got some cut-rate books anyway.
Just the same, the action was good, the heroes and villains played their parts well, and it was every bit the big-screen spectacle we’ve come to expect from these films. This one was a fitting end, and it was worth the price of admission to see it. I’d recommend it.
