Practice, after all, makes perfect and he's been doing this a while. He has laid on the fireworks (I particularly liked The Tale of the Three Brothers, rendered as a shadow-play) and filled the interior with a rich array of celebrity guests, so that the likes of Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Imelda Staunton and Helena Bonham Carter flit between the scenes with the satisfied air of jobbing actors who have been offered walk on roles at the world's most expensive fancy dress ball.Įlsewhere, purists may like to note that Ron gets to perform his signature move of scuttling backwards on his hands and heels while simultaneously gawping at some off-screen monster. Director David Yates has arranged the furniture to perfection. In this way the plot shunts ever onward in search of closure.ĭeathly Hallows looks great, in the way that a show home looks great. On other occasions, Hermione will pluck an arcane connection from some forgotten bit of wizarding lore, prompting Harry to widen his eyes and claim that she's brilliant. Sometimes an illuminated deer will trot over to show them something important. They cling to each other for comfort as the sexual tension sparks and gutters between them, much as it did for Frodo and Sam on the road to Mordor. This, it transpires, proves too onerous a task for Ron (Grint), who wimps out for a time and leaves Harry and Hermione (Watson) to go it alone. The big difference this time around is that Hogwarts is now a memory and the school's absence forces our three young castaways to pursue their quest against a Wagnerian backdrop of damp forests and windswept coastlines. It's simply that it's hard to mourn the demise of a franchise that was never more than half-alive to begin with.ĭoes it move does it breathe? Were it not for the fact that the world has watched Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint grow up on screen, we might as well have spent the past decade locked up inside a waxwork museum.Part one sees Harry (Radcliffe) attempting to variously evade and defeat the dark lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes): the same mission as it ever was. It's not so much that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows feels at times largely indistinguishable from the six outings preceding it, nor even that part one offers so little in the way of resolution(part two will surely take care of that).
"How can they tell?" quipped Dorothy Parker when told of the death of Calvin Coolidge, and it's tempting to ask a similar question about this, the boy wizard's last hurrah. It's going, going, almost gone, and yet its long goodbye comes in two separate instalments: a prolonged death rattle that begins with tonight's London premiere of part one, and won't conclude until the release of part two in July 2011. The record-breaking film series, adapted with a stentorian reverence from the JK Rowling bestsellers, totters towards the exit door at the end of a nine-year, seven-picture marathon, as its total running time nudges 20 hours and its inhabitants age before our eyes. F uneral wreaths at the ready, for Harry Potter is bowing out.