Cripes. This was a hard slog at two and a half hours. It's Dumbledore heavy and it really hit me how much more fun Richard Harris would've been than Michael Gambon. There's maybe half an hour of decent material here - Helena Bonham Carter leading an attack at the Weasley house and then at the climax. The rest is a bit of a trudge.
Ron and Hermoine are sidelined, especially Hermoine who just hangs around and moons about Ron. Harry is with Ginny who is so dull. I get the feeling Rowling by now was just coasting towards her Harry maingame and didn't care. For instance there's a terrific moral dilemma for Draco, the son of a baddie, promised to baddies who doesn't necessarily want to be bad, but it's basically skimmed over. I did like Alan Rickman, the goodie who seemed to be a baddie becoming a baddie.
David Yates' direction is competent, and I know dealing with these machines is like piloting a beast, but he doesn't seem able to extract emotion out of stuff even the death of Dumbledore. Maybe he can if you've read the books, because then you've got the memory of the books.
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