When the trailers for the film came out it promised a great deal fun & excitement. And why not? It is supposed to tell the story of the penultimate year at hogwarts of the central character : Harry Potter. And the times are dark, with voldermott gaining power and recruitng his brand of followers-dementors,giants etc.
So it was with high expectations that i braved the mumbai rains & went in to watch the movie. Sadly the film did not live up to its expectations. In todays world CGI is accepted fare and we already have seen such spectacles & sometimes better than this to accept everything at face value.No! in case of HBP something more than CGI was required.And it is where the film loses out.
The starting five minutes do work in raising your tempo: with three death eaters wrecking havoc on a house and a bridge in London.The visual imagery is fantastic esp when dumbledore asks harry to take his arm & disapparates to slughorn's locality.There you find slughorn in the form of sofa with the house broken down. The scene when dumbledore goes in search of something thereby leaving harry alone in the company of slughorn, knowing his weakness for collecting trophies ( famous people) ; & then returns with a magazine in hand is comically brilliant and true to the book.
The stirrings of love in harry for ginny is shown nicely as is the tension between ron & harmione.Harry & ginny do happen to steal a few moments in between the madness that is unfolding around them.It is all very credible and nicely done in the movie, still it leaves a lot to be desired. The film loses out between showing the love story or showing the action story : and in trying to show both on a equal footing falls flat on both accounts.
The sequence of attack on weasely home seemed forced & out of place with harry & ginny fighting off dementors on their own. The scene where they fight the dementors could be handled in more deft ways. Maybe i am turning greedy in here for i disired to see more of the duel than is shown.
The four parallel story lines of harry getting the half blood princes book, love affairs, his trying to get the memory of slughorn & harry's education with dumbledore proceed well. Each is taken care off with the love & memory taking prominence and hijacking the movie. The child hood scenes of tom riddle are handled nicely thought the menace is missing.The whole movie has only this much of voldermort's appearance.
The quiddatch matches have also been shown & for once someone else than harry takes centre stage. And then towards the end the film lights up again. It's at the entrance of the cave when harry & dumbledore stand on a rock with sea all around: that u admire the breadth taking view & vision of director (yates probably). The finding of fake horcrux in the end scene is brilliantly done.BUT the same cannot be said of the scene of dumbledore's killing & after.The death eaters come & leave the hogwart's ground without any fight except the 10 second duel with harry at the fag end of the movie.
The film is brilliant in parts but some how the summation leaves a lot to be desired.I, for one, feel that the last installment was much better than this movie.Now with the news that the last part of the movies will be split into two movies i am hoping that they will be better than this and not just a premise to extend the money minting machine.When last heard the movie studio is on the lookout for overcoming the James Bond franchise ( 22 films for some $5 billion odd versus the 5 films of potter for $4.25 billion leaving this out).
Let's see what the future brings!
The rushes of 2012 look brilliant. This is a film by the director of day after tomorrow,Independence day,godzilla,patriot etc, Mr Rolland Emmerich. It explores the premise that world will encounter a catastrophe in the year 2012. Let's see how the film turns out.
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