Harry Potter

The most fun for me is that I've never really had an interest in any book series before. I liked a lot of different authors growing up but I can't say that I waited in any great anticipation for the next book in a series. I was never deeply "into" any chronicles so this whole Harry Potter experience is new for me and albeit, I'm not the target audience.

Co-workers kind of scoff at the fact that I'll be in line late on Friday night to get my hands on the book. Part of me thought about getting it delivered on Saturday where I can stay safely hidden inside ... I can only guess there will be some jackass who will do his best to announce some particular of the book to those of us in the long, long line-up. I'm sure everyone has seen the YouTube video from the last release. However, I find there's a lot of excitement waiting in that very long line up waiting to purchase the book. The excitement of the younger crowd and the parents pretending that they aren't just as thrilled to be there. The people who go all nutsy and dress up as Wizards. Last time, a couple of kids dressed up as Crookshank. Its fun to be a part of it and this year, Little Mouse is home to do it too.

If anything Harry Potter has done, is get people reading. I witness this through Troll-Boy who is normally forced to read every school assign out loud because otherwise he fakes that he's done it. He is normally bribed or forced to read. Harry Potter was first introduced to him in the movies. Troll-Boy lives for movies. His brother Peaches, is an avid reader. So when Troll-Boy learned that there was much more to the story than was on film, it intrigued him. He liked the movies so why would they have more interesting parts in the book? Well, he's reading them to find out. He's gone through the first two on his own, with no requirement to do so. If you knew Troll-Boy, this is an amazing tale.

Although it does mean that in the newest movie - The Order of Phoenix - that he doesn't quite understand all that went on. The movie, unfortunately, has a lot of reading requirements and Troll-Boy could not keep up with the newspaper headlines. Not so fun to have him asking the theater what the hell happened to Dumbledore??!! (when he exploded into fire to escape the Ministry.) Kinda sucked to keep telling him to watch the movie and we'd explain later.

Now the movie, I thought was quite disappointing. I know it'll go on to make millions and millions and I think WB takes advantage of that. The reviews, from the one's I read, all gave the movie a good 4 stars to 4.5 stars out of 5. Quite generous, I thought.

First of all, the younger audience, such as Troll-Boy, had better be able to read their way through scenes or it won't make sense. I witnessed it. And unfortunately, he wasn't the only one being hushed in the theater because some of the younger audience couldn't follow the whole story either.

I guess my pet peeve is that the movie can't stand on its own. You need to read the book to fully appreciate the movie. I know a lot of people will not have read the book and still like the movie but I found it very incomplete. It was choppy. I didn't like the character change for the snitch either. I know there's a redemption provided but still.

Its a long book that many people will say could have been edited. The movie couldn't do it all but does a poor job of picking out the important parts and doing them well. It took significant scenes and jammed them in. Like Snape being bullied by James. Too short of a part in the movie for the significance that it has for both Snape and Harry... but then they didn't deal with that in the movie either.

The fight at the Ministry was cool. IMAX has that part in 3-D (20 minutes worth) and as I haven't seen a 3-D movie in a long time, that was a lot of fun. This part could have been longer, even if not in 3-D. If you didn't see HP on IMAX, I'd recommend it.

The death of Sirius was done well ... the silent but visual screaming and agony was well portrayed. However, following that, the movie ended in almost an upbeat fashion. Sirius is dead and Harry should be more devastated and bitter. The search to see if Sirius might be a ghost or on the other side of the two-way mirror was sadly missed.

I might be biased too as Sirius was my favorite character. I've disliked his short appearances in all the movies to date so I suppose I expected a bit more from his death. Silly me.

There's no doubt I'll own the DVD and see this movie a few more times. I might come to appreciate it more once I get over the disappointment at the editing. Honestly, I think I was more excited by some of the spoilers scenes I got from Yahoo then I did when I saw them all together. Kinda sad. With the money put into the film, surely someone could have made the story more complete than it turned out.

I'm not going to give this movie a rating. If you're a HP fan, you have to see it. It's just what a fan does.

3 more sleeps until I get my hands on the book. I'm bringing a BB gun with me to the line-up... spoilers beware!