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Lee Ingleby from Spaced! Ian Brown! Hot shit!
Production values were excellent, really liked this new Hogwarts, even though I believe it doesn't remotelly tally with what we've seen before in the previous movies (I don't think they've been quite so explicit with a Wales/Scotland hilly location have they?) but I only watched them once so can't remember. I just love there being steps anywhere, a much useful device seeing as you've got children acting against adults, it really helps thematically to set them apart. But lovely lovely cinematography, helped make up for the story deficiencies.
How cruel of them to film through the fortnight that Rupert Grint was going through puberty. Best moments, Harry playing with his wand in the opening minutes, then the first scene with Malfoy in it. Malfoy is so sizing him up. He wants him now. And as Plums has said elsewhere, the werewolf-as-metaphor-for-slightly-dated-perception-of-homosexuality is very well done here, especially as Thewlis doesn't use the 'w' word once.
But, and this is probably a book fault rather than a film fault, what has Lupin done to piss Dumbledore off? Dumbledore is willing to go to the wall for Harry, Hermione, Ron or Hagrid, even Sirius, counselling Harry and Hermione on a course that this time deliberately puts them in danger to rescue Sirius and the Hypogriff. Lupin meanwhile is allowed to roam wild where 'he's a danger to anyone, including himself' and is then for some reason expelled at the end of term, despite the fact that no-one, like Malfoy, need be any the wiser as to his condition. Snape already knows he's a werewolf, so does he report him out of spite for what goes on in the Shrieking Shack? And like I said, Dumbledore finds a way out for his 'special' friends. When you've got dangerous potions being concocted, those things that turn people to stone in film two and Quidditch, which can kill people, it seems a bit farcical that people get so concerned with a hypogriff stamping on the arm of someone who doesn't follow the rules, but I suppose we have to believe it's a deliberate overreaction just because it's Malfoy's father.
The three leads were differing degrees of annoying this time, though to be fair Rupert didn't have anything to do at all. Emma Watson was at the best of all three movies so far. And Daniel Radcliffe just act upset. Angry yes, crying, no. And poor, poor Tom Felton. After the glories of the last film Draco Malfoy, one-dimensional character that he is really deserved better than this. Somehow the script managed to turn him sub-one dimensional, he's not even there to bully and obstruct our heroes any more, he turns up, someone hurts him, he leaves. Maybe for film 4 they should just throw the book out the window and claimed he left to join the Chalet School or something.
But after a promising start the story in this film just sucked. Whereas for all her faults Rowling is very good at writing a story to her books, this film harked back to the first one, going for the key events rather than any sense of time passing, for all the use of the Whomping Willow to denote time going by, one minute they're hip deep in snow, the next it's not, but it all feels like it could have happened over a couple of weeks. And again, I was surprised that there's no real sense of danger to Harry, but because we don't get the idea that there is real time passing so there's no build up to the threat.
Although Sirius' first appearence was great I wasn't too impressed by Gary Oldman as much as I thought I was going to be. He didn't seem to be making much of an effort, considering some of his films that might not be a bad thing but Black in the book is almost wraithlike himself, surviving mainly on willpower and looking in bad enough shape to scare people, film Sirius looks just like... Gary Oldman with unbrushed hair and beard. I thought David Thewlis was the star performer this time round, investing his character with so much pathos that it was only when he was in danger that I was really concerned.
And the thing with the stag Patronus at the water, if you're going to ignore the whole aspect of the four Animaguses, why bother first time round with showing the Stag Patronus form? If you're going to still keep the Stag Patronus in anyway, then the second time round you can't just ignore it, as they did here. In this scene we have the slightly farcical situation that Harry 1 is almost killed by the Dementors, they are driven off by someone he doesn't see and, when he becomes aware of him he looks like a brilliant white stag. Yet for no reason at all that we are given on film, Harry 1 thinks this is his Dad. In the book it makes much more sense, but here there's nothing to back up the dialogue. It might have been better if they'd dropped the Animagus element and had Harry 1 looking at Harry 2, who's been morphed to look a bit older or something.
So maybe Harry Potter will be like Star Trek movies, each odd-numbered episode is shit. |
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