Review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) by Tim S — 17 Dec 2012

The money-making machine keeps turning, and now we come to the next to last film in the Harry Potter series: The Deathly Hallows Part 1. Instead of having a straightforward and epic final film to close out the series, the filmmakers instead decided to divide the huge final novel into two parts for the film adaptation.

Again, I haven't read these books so I can't say much about how well-adapted they are, but I will say this: even though there are a lot of complicated and much-needed character dynamics going on this one (even more than the previous films), this definitely isn't the most jam-packed film story-wise.

There are great gaps where hardly anything happens at all and the story has no momentum. I assume all of the great action set pieces are being saved for the final film, but if so, this film suffers for it.

It's both executed and shot well, and there are some nice moments peppered in there, albeit sparingly, but I'm really starting to feel that most of this could have been trimmed down and combined with the other part to form a grand three hour finale.

However, that's just my two cents. Now that I'm a bit more versed in these films and how they work, I await seeing the final part and epic conclusion to the series with anticipation. I just hope it has more going on in it than this one.