Monday, January 16, 2006

Harry Potter sucks!

OK, we went to go see Harry Potter on the IMAX--huge screen, great for all the vistas and special effects. Whoops, we realized almost immediately that they forgot to include an actual movie with the special effects. Characters did bizarre things for no reason, there was an interminably long middle section of the movie that, while charming in its lack of concern for advancing the plot, did make my honey whisper romantically to me "only another 2 hours to go", a sentiment which I heartily agreed with. The wizards' tournament that was at the heart of the movie was not really competitive or exciting (except for one underwater scene that was just good enough to make me realize that the movie really could have been better) and had crowds of in-movie spectators in the bleachers even though they couldn't actually have seen anything while the event was going on. Everyone keeps giving dire warnings to our hero which never really come about, and at the end of the movie, after the evil baddie swears revenge in a blood-soaked tizzy, they all go blithely off on summer vacation with no worries about said baddie, who apparently (like midterms) only strikes during the school semester. Absolute dreck from end to end, and since we didn't see it when it first came out, we saw it in the company of a theater full of true believers, who had clearly seen it AGAIN AND AGAIN, and were thrilled to pay $10 for the IMAX experience. Sad, since I actually liked the third movie (Prisoner of Azkaban), and had hopes of this one. Apparently this new director decided that since he had a built in audience (it's Harry! On-Screen!) , he didn't really have to have the movie make any sense...paging George Lucas, who handed the Star Wars fanatics a similarly disappointing experience. I rate the movie candy at three stars. About the movie, 'nuff said.