First, you put on your cute, round, black-rimmed glasses, just like the ones Harry Potter wears. Then you enter the theater to see "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 2," which opens today.
And then you experience excruciating boredom for more than two hours as the young wizard is blurred by a 3-D process that intrudes on every shot. Well, maybe the images shooting out at you are fun for the first five or 10 minutes, before almost everything is subordinated to the technical side of movie-making. The movie also is available in old-fashioned 2-D, and I'd recommend that; despite not having seen it in that format. It couldn't be worse.
What survives is the remarkable skill of dozens of mostly-English actors who once again are often hidden behind swaths of costumes and trapped in musty, infantile dialogue. The heroes, Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger are fine, but I'm referring to such as Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, John Hurt, Julie Walters, Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane and Gary Oldman, among dozens of others. Having done this over and over and over again, it's amazing that they can find moments to make it all fresh again.
Of course, they're fortunate. They are not exposed to snakes, dragons, vultures, men, dwarfs, robots and all sorts of other creatures great and small, many firing the slings and arrows of outrageous special-effects creators and added later. Almost every scene largely involves things and people, dead and alive, flying out of the screen toward the audience. A couple of scenes of exploding heads are inserted in a failing search to create drama, if not interest.
The story is the final act of the Potter dynasty, we hope, and it's familiar to all who have read the books. Some of the attempts to add tension are ludicrous. After dozens of possible endings are passed over in a continuing search for authenticity and excitement, the screen goes dark and after a moment or two, "19 years later" appears on it. I laughed out loud, and I was the only person in the theater with that reaction, or so said my 16-year-old grandson, who has seen all the movies, most of them multiple times, and who said he was "disappointed."
I didn't think much of the latest adventure of Potter and Pals, but I didn't expect much, either. Many movies are made for fun and profit; sequels, however, are made only for profit, and some of the truly talented filmmakers get bored. Still, I always enjoy watching such as Rickman, Smith, Thompson, Gambon and others; I'd be pleased to listen to them read the telephone book. Steve Kloves' screenplay lurches along and the direction, by David Yates, obviously takes a back seat to the technicians who seem to think that 3-D is the answer to everything. It isn't.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 2 opens today.
—Joe
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I saw this in 2D. Many scenes were blurred, and you could spot many scenes that appear to be added purely for the 3D effect. I thought the film may have been better in 3D… but based on your review it’s actually just crap.