Might there be more to the latest “Harry Potter” installment than seeing the world’s most over-exposed story start to end?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reviews are as pointless as Four Loko without the caffeine. We’re all going to go see this thing no matter what the reviews say.
As D+T writer Heny Giardina asks, “why do people want to go see a movie in the first place whose ending they already know?”
Some of us just don’t want to miss out on participating in a phenomenon that’s gained such critical mass that to not see it means being left out of the modern cultural zeitgeist. Some of us like to self-project magic and empowerment. And some of us just have a thing for Emma Watson.
For the precisely the same reasons that the “Harry Potter” series has become unavoidable, advance reviews—regardless of being already committed to seeing the movie—have acquired a kind of magnetic pull, drawing us in no matter how irrelevant to our decision-making.
And the reviews are downright bizarre.
MTV today aggregates a collection of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reviews, many of them filled with strange non-sequiturs, oblique half-jabs and starry-eyed fawning that make it appear the collective body of reviewers was just straight-up confounded by “The Deathly Hallows.” Here are some of the most interesting excerpts:
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: “Like a virgin’s padded bra, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1′ is all tease, zero payoff… A movie that plays like a 146-minute trailer for the actual final chapter — ‘Part II’ opens next July in 3-D! — is a definite cheat.”
USA Today: “Menacing and meditative, ‘Hallows’ is arguably the best installment of the planned eight-film franchise, though audiences who haven’t kept up with previous chapters will be hopelessly lost…”
The Washington Post: “It’s half of a really good movie, full of the enchantment, emotion and incident for which the Potter series has become so fanatically cherished.”
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: “I felt a swell of love and awe wash over me from the very first wickedly creepy scene until the profoundly moving last one. Under the direction of David Yates — in Goldilocks terms, he’s Just Right, having gently guided the series to more consistent excellence in pace and tone with the last two installments — ‘Part 1′ is the most cinematically rewarding chapter yet.”
The Village Voice: “The fights, both airborne and grounded, are exciting and unusually coherent, and the special effects are top-notch as usual.”
I had been expecting mostly dialed-in cinematic platitudes from “The Deathly Hallows.” But “padded bra”? “Hopelessly lost”? I’m starting to think there might actually be more to this Harry Potter installment than seeing a story start to end whose ending we all already know
