‘Arry Pottery Barn
Well, that happened.
I saw the most recent installment of the Harry Potter movie series this weekend. Fun times abound as we got there an hour early, allowing we and the Zigzags to be 136th-139th in line. (We know this thanks to TLEMK’s genius detective work of counting all the people in front of us.)
Never fear, we got terrific seats. I love opening night at an over-hyped movie. People cheered at the WB logo. It was very Star Wars-esque
My review: Read everyone else’s review about it, and you’ll get the idea. They cut a lot out, and there wasn’t enough dialogue for me. I thought it captured the adolescence/coming-of-age/raging hormones part fairly well. I thought the end was probably the best part of the movie.
(Stream-of-conciousness time-out– Target is doing their celebrity wakeup call thing again this year to get a start onthe shopping. Kermit can call you. Did you hear me people? KERMIT THE FROG CAN WAKE YOU UP!)
I could rant and rave about the inconsistencies between the book and movie, but those are naturally going to happen. So much happens inside the head of Harry in the book that one pan and scan shot of Harry looking at Cho (who is adorable in this movie) is not nearly enough to convey all the emotions that any of the characters are going through in the story. I went back reread book V and VI after I finished IV, and now I just want the next book and movie to come out.
You may not be suprised to learn that I stick by my description of myself as a very fat Hermione, and here’s the proof:
Which HP Kid Are You?
Well, who are you?
RSS Trackback URL 21. November 2005 (21:39)Filed under: General, Music and Movies, Chomping on Books
7 Comments»
Dave
22. November 2005 | 09:13 h“it captured the adolescence/coming-of-age/raging hormones part fairly well” I disagree. There’s one whole huge factor in the books, and in real life, that the movie completely glosses over…. doubt. Self-doubt. At some point (was it book 4 or book 5?) Harry turns into a whiney teenager, with a “Why me?” and “What can I possibly do to change things?” attitude. Even at the end of Book 6 he’s still being hand-held around by everyone.
I thought that whole vein of the books, and his character, was sorely missing from the movie. There were other scenes I would have cut to keep that part of the character development.
That and while the last third was the best part of the movie, it still didn’t hold a candle to the books.
Sarah
22. November 2005 | 09:34 hI haven’t seen HP4 yet (going with my aunt and cousing this week) but I agree that they have completely taken out a huge part of Harry’s character. I’m curious to see what they’re going to do for book five when he become a total, well I’ll just say jerk, self-absorbed jerk, that’s better. He is so angry throughout all of book five and I wonder how they’re going to keep up the hero-only character they have on screen. And most of that is going on in his head, so the movie makers have their work cut out for them. But I do like the movies as long as I think of them separately from the books.
And I did the quiz and I am:
Which HP Kid Are You?
Hopefully the link for the picture works.
Sarah
22. November 2005 | 09:35 hOk obviously it didn’t work.
I’m Harry Potter.
Beth
22. November 2005 | 19:17 hHey, I’m Hermione too!
Although, I kinda figured I was headed in that direction when I picked “I told you so” as my most likely quote.
Tony
23. November 2005 | 07:05 h*SPOILER WARNING*
Kenny, let me rephrase that…
For cutting out 60% of the book, including SPEW, Winky, Percy, Ludo Bagman, veelas, angry leprechauns, “Herm-o-ninny”, and anything else that I forgot that they cut, I thought they did an okay job representing the fact that Harry and crew are growing up, including the Ron/Harry fight and the whole ‘Who are you going to the dance with?” saga.’ (Oi! Angelina! Wanna go to the ball with me?”) I never said that I thought it was a resounding cinematic experience, and of course the movies are never going to be able to hold a candle to the books. So, out of all the things the movie got “wrong”, at least they tried to integrate one piece from the book. The lack of dialogue to combat the feelings of doubt and insecurities that take place in Harry’s head is something they will definitely need to address in the next movie, or it will continue to diverge from the author’s intended path.
Harry’s journey through the “Why me?” phase of heroism takes place mostly through book five, which is another reason you don’t see it represented here. Not that you’ll see it represented in the next movie, but…
Ness
23. November 2005 | 12:08 hOkay, I saw the movie a second time on my recent sojourn to the land of sun, and I have to say that I truly enjoyed it the second go ’round. I focused on just the movie, not what was left out of the book (difficult at times, I admit), and I thought it was well done. True, some glaring details (i.e. characters) were missing, but I felt the director was successful in conveying the same meanings. And? Voldemort was awesome.
Cindy
23. November 2005 | 14:06 hI’m Hermione Granger. And… you are?
I loved HP 4 - probably because I hadn’t read the book in 2 years and was able to view it from a movie-goer’s perspective. Plus, given the number of books I’ve read that have been turned into movies, I’ve learned not to expect everything from a book to be in a movie. It’s just not possible unless you have a movie that is like six hours long. Most of us don’t have attention spans or butt-padding to handle a movie of that length.
If you think of the movies as “Harry Potter Lite”, then I think you can stomach them. The books will ALWAYS be better than the movies - that’s true of any story. The movie gives you the gist of it, not the in depth understanding of character and subtle bits of the plot. Just enough to get you by discussing best-selling books in a pop-culture conversation.
But my favorite part of the movie (and remember I loved it all) was when Harry called Ron a “right foul git” for being so lousy toward him. Why can’t we use language like that in America? That’s just bloody brilliant.