Deathly Hallows Excitement

I intended to post this yesterday, honestly... but then I took a "short nap" at 3 pm and woke up twelve hours later, so that didn't happen.

WARNING: this is a review of Deathly Hallows, so if you haven't seen the movie, DO NOT READ THIS. SPOILERS. THANK YOU.

You know how there are some stories that nobody seems to care about? You tell one person, then two more people, and even though everyone responds with the same blasé "wow, that was fascinating..." snort, you feel compelled to keep relating that story over and over because somebody somewhere will appreciate you for it?

I embodied that personality yesterday at school. People would ask me what I thought of the movie. After the expected verbal explosion of praise and "I'm not going to spoil it for you but YOU HAVE TO SEE IT NAO"-ness, I'd say, "It was sooooooo good, but the two people I went with were sobbing through the whole thing and then this girl on the other side of me was either sick (she said she had a fever) or crying and I was just sitting in the middle not crying and surrounded by misery."

I think that was my way of coming to terms with the irrational sense of guilt I feel for not crying... at all... during Deathly Hallows. As I've said before, Deathly Hallows is one of my favorite books of all time and I expected to start sobbing from the moment Hermione Obliviates her parents' memories (like my friend Faye, bless her). That didn't happen. I genuinely loved the movie; it's absolutely the best one so far (other than Sorcerer's Stone, which I adore primarily for sentimental reasons). Come to think of, though, I can't remember crying until the last few chapters of the book. It's been a few years since I first read it, of course, so maybe I broke down earlier than that. Sobbing while Harry uses the Resurrection Stone, that's what I remember. Love the book. Love the movie. Love them. Didn't cry. I know that doesn't make me a bad fan; it would have been nice, though. It sounds weird to say that you wish you had cried, but sometimes crying makes you feel better, you know? Ahh. Weird. Anyway...

Good things: (Basically the entire movie, so I shall list just a few of the highlights:)

- Bellatrix. Helena Bonhem Carter toned it down a little for Deathly Hallows -- AWESOME. She wasn't quite as WAHHHHHH I'M A CRAZAAY MOTHA EFFAH; it was more of a calm, collected crazy/evil with crazy explosions inserted at appropriate intervals , which was so good. I'm so happy with her!

- Hermione/Bellatrix torture scene. Emma Watson is most skilled at screaming.

- The trio's relationships with each other. I could rave about it for years, but everything was perfect -- they didn't seem like actors playing the trio, they felt like *the trio,* which has never really happened before.

- The trio in general. They've all gotten so much better at acting! Ron/Rupert Grint had a chance to actually have emotions other than vague befuddlement and he totally pulled it off.

- The dialogue. There were so many lines lifted directly from the books! And when new dialogue was added, it almost always seemed totally appropriate.

- Snape. He was in it only very briefly and those few seconds/minutes were breathtaking. I loved how even though he was still very stonefaced (as he should be) he managed to convey his conflicted emotions without ever cracking a smile or crying or whatever. Alan Rickman is going to kick so much ass in Part 2.

- The adult actors during the Ministry scenes. Their facial expressions and movements and everything were so perfect that, as my other friend commented, "I had to keep reminding myself that they were adult actors, not the trio in disguise."*

Criticisms:

- Kreacher and RAB: they cut out the entire back story! I realize that the story would have done little to advance the film's plot and probably would have been lost on the general movie-going audiences, but SAD TIMES nonetheless.

- Dobby's appearance. This is a hugely superficial complaint, be warned: he didn't look real. Huge improvement over Chamber of Secrets, but he still looked, well, fake. I guess it's because I'm so used to seeing HUGE REALISTIC EXPLOSIONS that I forget that it's still hella hard to create CGI humans (or human-esque creatures). Nevertheless, his personality was perfect and I'm generally pleased with his character.

- Ron didn't try to escape from the jail at Malfoy Manor. Definitely not detrimental to the film, but the moments when he throws himself at the walls trying to get to Hermione (in the book) tears your own heart out and throws that at the walls, too. (It's worth noting that Hermione/Ron interactions elsewhere were excellent, though).

* I got the phrasing wrong, but she said something to that effect. Technically. :)