Which was a joke. They might as well have said, "in SMELL-O-VISION!"
The opening scenes and about 20 minutes near the end does not, in my opinion, justify calling it 3-D. Not when you are part of the generation that got to watch JAWS 3-D!
Right, yes, fancier glasses (with RFID chips so you don't snag them) than when I was 8, but I'd happily go cross-eyed with the red/blue cardboard shades---that you got to keep as souvenirs, mind--if the ENTIRE MOVIE was the as-promised-but-not-delivered 3-D. Seeing as I was probably one of the only people there old enough to "remember when" 3-D movies were full-length, we went to a Friday night 10 PM showing, I kept my mouth quiet.
So the movie...(If you're waiting for the video, I'll let you know when to stop reading.)
Really, it is about what anyone can expect an 800+page book to be rendered into without having a Part I & II. It was far less disjointed than say, the second movie. I think it's a bad plan to read the book before you see the movie though because, like the annoying girl that sat next to me, you will be tempted to tell your friend with the broken feet EVERY SINGLE DEVIATION FROM THE NOVEL until the older lady sitting next to you elbows you accidentally, and when you drop your 3-d glasses in her lap, lets them fall to the floor and maybe steps on them before "accidentally" kicking them somewhere far away from her, ahem.
I come away from these last 3 films now with the same disappointment, though. I miss Richard Harris. Andy put it best--yes, he doesn't "get" the whole HP phenomena/cult, yet he will procure me a needed book, and go with me to the movies...kinda like a crack dealer or something:
Kinda like in the movie version of Return of the King at the near end when EVERYONE (including the audience) is crying their eyes out and Bilbo is seen walking next to Gandalf as they are about to board the Elf boat off to the Grey Havens? The fellow is a bit overenthusiastic for a 130 year-old hobbit, or however old he was. It was a freaky transition from the old hobbling Bilbo of just seconds before. Maybe I'm the only one who noticed because everyone else was crying so hard?
Michael Gambon's entrances where he's plowing into a scene these last two movies...and he does PLOW, not strut, not amble, makes him seem like he's too young to be Albus. After all, the fact that Dummbly-dore was already a teacher when Tom Riddle went to Hogwarts 55 years prior, puts him at about a good 80 years young! I know a few 80 year olds, and as spritely as they can be? They have never PLOWED into a room like they're going so fast they will crash against the opposite wall. Well, maybe if they were wearing those new roller-sneakers. There were times when I thought he was skidding to a stop, so fast was his need to jump into a scene. Again, maybe it was the fact that I was watching Gambon on a screen 6 stories high, that his portrayal jumped out at me all wrong?
Though I can't blame anyone else of the same weird mannerisms. I mean, Alan Rickman's Snape has been funky/twitchy/melodramatic from the get go: Remember HP1 when he just about RUNS into his classroom--for the billowing robe effect--to introduce himself to his students for the very first time? (I was so tempted to do that back in my school-marmy days...Never did find the right cloak to pull it off in, though. I mean, you try that effect with muggle clothes and you just look plain silly.)
(Okay, from this point on there might be some spoilage about bits and pieces that differ from book to movie.)
It is rather odd to have the "wrong" people saying the "wrong" lines, at the oddest times...and a few of those "shortcuts" have now, actually, changed the story line ENTIRELY, for me at least. Hello? Can we say MIRROR, or um lack there of.
Did anyone catch the goat in the Boar's Head? OMG ROTFL! Or, rather, I would have been if I hadn't been at the last showing of the night with the dirt of the ages at our feet. But that was some great foreshadowing there.
Then there was Imelda Staunton's portrayal of Dolores Umbridge, wow. Pure concentrated evil brought to life. Someone has to mention it, and it might as well be me...okay, that scene where she's sitting on her throne while the kids are in detention? I mean I was almost squirming with the IMAX sound of all those kids getting hurt/hurting themselves, but um, was that an orgasm she was having? That was so very wrong on so many levels, and EVIL!
Paralleling that evil--Beatrix LeStrange. I didn't have "insane" in my descriptors of her, but I really should have. My only disappointment is that we didn't get to see more of her. I mean, within the first 3 minutes of her appearance in the books, you simply want to rip her throat out. You don't get that feeling in the film. She comes across as weak, though, and again, that bugs and makes me feel like the whole HP storyline has been altered. Cuz really, how will it look in times to come when the final (#7) showdown happens? A crazy, weak, stupid, though sexy looking Bea is not who I pictured AT ALL.
Okay, I'll stop now, lest I say too much.
Overall, yeah, the movie is "meh" compared to the one in my head...but nonetheless, entertaining on a number of sadomasochistic levels.
So, um, how many Umbridge pink cardigans with the plastic bow buttons will we be seeing this fall, hmmm? Have you all picked out your yarn yet?
