Film Review: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" (**1/2)

Within minutes of returning home from seeing the eighth and final Harry Potter film, I started tweeting away my untarnished thoughts on the event. I only got out three slight jabs, as I realized how many people on the receiving end of them were probably massive fans of the books and the films. I was suspended in disbelief when all the positive reviews came flowing in, because it does seem curious for a film series that's garnered quite a bit of critical recoil in the past to suddenly get all this buzz. It goes to show how the weight of hype and expectation can forcibly change an experience. Oddly enough, it didn't change mine. How I saw the film the first time is how I'll always see it, and trying to deny that is foolhardy.

The proudest jab, and somehow compliment, that I laid out on Twitter early this morning was "I feel like 'Deathly Hallows: Part 2' is the perfect companion piece for 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon'." I meant that in the best respect to "Transformers" and the worst respect to "Potter". That's largely because both films are so completely obsessed with that final battle, where everything blows up and the ultimate stakes are at risk. After taking care of that final mission in Gringotts, which is surprisingly one of the more favorable parts of the film, they just rush on over to Hogwarts, and then everything goes off like clockwork,

By "clockwork", I mean unyielding and extremely flawed if you throw in the wrong cog. The thing with the Transformers comparison is that while both go into the final battle with urgency, we never get a sense of exactly what we have to lose in Potter. Yes, it's the final war of the wizarding world, and in fact the muggle world as well, but we never once get any sense of extreme danger. In fact, in David Yates' intention to move things along quickly, the battle feels way too small and glossed over. We barely even see the full extent of it. He instead decides to dwell too long on plot details that could've been given a little less time and devotion. Occasionally the film moves too rapidly, and then it just slows to a sluggish crawl.

It's not just the inconsistency, but the screenplay could also use more than a bit of work. There are moments in the film that just prop up inorganically, such as Ron and Hermione's first kiss. There's a little spat from Voldemort's Horcrux, which is over quite too soon as if it were just placed in at the last minute, and then they just randomly kiss. And then we move on. There are plenty of moments like that which are put in just for the sake of it. Not sure why. Then they just threw in the death of Harry's mother in the most inconsequential of placed, and Harry's father might as well have never existed at all. In fact, some people got the impression that Snape was actually Harry's dad. Oh, how a botched film job can mislead people. But lingering on that thought, how could J.K. Rowling not have milked that possibility for all it could've been in the first place? It's here where the flaws in the original material sink in.

There were quite a few things that I was surprised at how silly, or rather doofy, they were. Everyone is raving about Alan Rickman, but his performance is quite honestly one of the most pathetic of the film. His character is pretty much thrown into the idiocy of forced romance and insincere sacrifice, and that could've been done in a way in which we actually believed him. The sequence with the resurrection stone doesn't manage any emotional resonance, or believability. You don't get the sense that these people are Harry's family. There's more obviously the feel that we don't know who the hell they are. The King's Cross rendezvous with Dumbledore is done more as a fever trip than anything, and it doesn't give Harry any of the confidence that he needed. It misread whatever merits the book did have painfully.

And then the final battle just happens. Nothing is packed with the gravitas or weight that it should, and if it is, it's from the sentimentality the series has always earned from us, the fans. It speaks volumes of this film that one poorly placed and obvious shot of the deceased bodies of two characters is able to send shivers up my spine. It makes me wonder how amazing this might have been if they had taken more time and effort to see things through. That's not to bash Yates too hard, as I admire how his cinematic interests skew more towards Miyazaki than anyone else. However, that would have been much better suited to the first three films, when it needed that influence.

Now, I'm not to say that the film is without its own merits, because quite a bit of the fighting is exciting. It just doesn't give enough feeling of scale and massive involvement. Also, if I may, that broomsticks scene in the room of requirement displays the clunkiest CGI I've seen in a $250 million film. You see a war zone afterwords, but you don't quite see it becoming a war zone. Most of the performances in the film are good where they need to be. However, I found favorites of mine like Jim Broadbent and Emma Thompson took too much of a backseat to Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman milking ham for all it can give them. Fiennes' best moments were when he was so certain Harry was dead. Still, he's more of a cartoon baddie than a maniacal villain.

If I'm to be honest about my favorite performance of the film, it's Kelly MacDonald as Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost that Harry visits for information. She gives such a reserved emotional portrayal that was welcome in a film that said things a little too loudly. I also felt that the film needed to express melancholy a lot more than it did. It glossed over the death and sacrifice with an ending that was just too sweet and gleeful. Like a failure of any cinematographer, the film ends on the smirking faces of our three main characters, which is as clunky a final impression as you can give.

Also, for that last scene, could Yates have done something more to make them look, I don't know, 19 years older? Also, is that the best font they could find for that rift in time? Yes, these are quibbles, but they lead to the realization of greater flaws. I mean, how hard is it to make a great film out of this? Where did they go wrong? Ultimately, the film feels really stiff and rigid, like many a corpse it shows in the film. Yes, I did appreciate Alexandre Desplat's detailed and delicate score, but the events didn't match up. I'm sorry if this sounds to fans like I'm betraying the series that has brought me so much joy, but I feel betrayed. After years of somewhat solid artistic endeavors, how is THIS the end?