Excess of Opinions

acting was good, Saoirse Ronan is terrific and her american accent is as good as her english. pretty sets.

that said, i know i brought it on myself by reading the book, but SRSLY, giant mutant animals?! conspiracy subplot?! WTF?! it was like the screenwriter had his 8-year-old read the book and tell him about it in 10 minutes or less, then made up the rest. the made-up crap doesn’t even make SENSE, and was so counter to the core of the story. clearly whoever adapted this completely did not get the book.

there is one great thing about this movie, and his name is Tom Felton.

why do they insist on making these movies without having read the book? i get that things must changed and omitted in an adaptation, i DO, but they truly don’t seem to understand what the IMPORTANT parts are, and they end up gutting the dramatic peaks in favor of pointless diversions that don’t further the plot. it’s as though the producers are so offended that the books are good that they’re determined to take every high point of the story and re-do it from scratch with no regard for how it affects the story as a whole – or toss them entirely. what kills me is that the story they abandoned was clear and simple, and they replace it with something convoluted that doesn’t have dramatic power.

there’s no funeral?! they could have wrung that theater like a washcloth, but nah, skip it. instead of having an exciting final quidditch match at the end of the year where harry finally gets to smooch ginny, they remove that in favor of a 15-minute practice at the beginning, slip that kiss in there quickly and randomly, no big whup.

i admit that all these movies are strongly hampered for me by Daniel Radcliffe and Micheal Gambon. Radcliffe is a pretty young man but has never been right for Harry, and at this point is just not a good actor – stiff and fakey with an emotional range consisting of vague amusement or PMS. Michael Gambon lacks that je ne se Dumbledore, always playing him as just some old guy, no impishness or hidden power. and how far can you go when your 2 protagonists are so lame?