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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)

Warner Home Video
Blu-ray Disc Released: 4/15/2011

All Ratings out of

Movie:
1/2
Video:
1/2
Audio:

Extras:


Review by Mike Long, Posted on 4/10/2011

I've never sat down and officially attempted to adapt a novel into a screenplay, but it can't be easy. What do you keep? What do you throw away? Which characters are essential? Movies based on books have been around forever and many of these have been epics. But, in the recent past, filmmakers have apparently felt the freedom to make these movies incredibly long. The latest trend is to take a book and split the resulting film into two parts. This is what is happening with the last installment of the Twilight franchise, and that's the case with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Yes, J.K. Rowling's book are always behemoths, but did this have to be told in two parts?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 picks up not long after the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Dumbledore is dead and the world of magic is in chaos. Despite the fact that the Ministry of Magic has assured the populace that everything is under control, Death Eaters, the minions of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), continue to attack both wizards and muggles (non-witch folk). Knowing that Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) will be a primary target of Voldemort, his friends, including Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), and Mad-Eye Moody (Brendan Gleeson), arrive at his home to help him get to a safe location. As it's believed that Harry had something to do with Dumbledore's death, he is named "Undesirable #1" -- thus Harry, Ron, and Hermione hide in a forest. There, they try to determine a way to destroy the horcrux (pieces of Voldemort's soul) that they have and how they can find the others. However, time is growing short and Voldemort's army is ready to make its final move.

I've been a fan of the Harry Potter fans since I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on a whim. However, as the books have presumably gotten more complicated (my wife and kids have read the books, but I'm too busy typing to pick one up), the movies have suffered in quality. With Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I got the feeling that the movie was glossing over important material from the book in order to make its way through the story to the all-important conclusion. Again, I know that adapting a book like the superchunks that Rowling delivers can be a challenge, but so can streamlining it into a cohesive story.

Which brings us to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. This movie feels like the exact opposite of Half-Blood Prince. Here, it feels as if the decision to make two movies has given screenwriter Steve Kloves license to stretch things out. Even though its 2 1/2 hours long, it never feels as if we are getting much story or information in Deathly Hallows Part 1. To be honest, the bulk of the film feels as if it's one long camping trip for Harry, Ron, and Hermione. (I've been told that the book reads the same way.) There are long scenes of the trio in the woods experiencing ill-effects from the horcrux. These scenes are broken up by treks to other places to search for clues, but they always come back to the woods.

Meanwhile, seemingly important material, like the death of a semi-major character in the first act, is glossed over. (Seriously, someone says, "________ is dead." And that's it. We don't see this or know exactly how it happens. The Harry Potter films have always acted like they assumed that you've read the book, but Deathly Hallows Part 1 may be the worst culprit. Names and situations are mentioned in an off-hand manner as if we are supposed to know exactly what they are talking about. Then we have scenes like the one on the Hogwart's Express which seem to exist solely to remind us that the movie hasn't forgotten about some of the series' other characters.

Superhero movies are often accused of being too much of an "origin story" -- where most of the film is taken up with the story of how the hero got their powers and the only action occurring in the finale. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 operates in a similar fashion. The movie is long and has a lot of talking, but nothing seemingly important happens until the last 15 minutes. To the film's credit, the finale is gut-wrenching and certainly made me want to see the next movie as soon as possible, but it didn't remove the bad taste created by a film which seems to have been financed by Coleman stoves.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 proves that camping sucks even if you can do magic on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Warner Home Video. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains a 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 20 Mbps. When I say that this is a dark movie, I'm not talking about the tone. I mean that the image is often incredibly dark. I don't know what this looked like in theaters, but this transfer is dark. I made the mistake of starting the movie before dusk and had a hard time making out the action at times. Now, some daytime and (well-lit) interior scenes look fine, but the darker scenes come across as quite murky. In the brighter scenes, the colors look fine, but the image is soft at times. On the plus side, there is no visible grain or defects from the source material. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.2 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. Well, we may not be able to see what is happening, but we can certainly hear it. The track provides impressive surround and stereo effects. These effects are nicely detailed, showing good separation in the front and center channels, and they certainly bring the action scenes to life. As much of the movie takes place in the forest, the audio helps to illustrate sounds occurring off-screen. The subwoofer is impressive as well, especially during explosions.

The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 Blu-ray Disc contains several extras. Disc 1 offers "Maximum Movie Mode" which is hosted by Jason Isaacs -- Lucius Malfoy from the films. This Picture-in-Picture mode provide behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, as well as detailed information on the film's production and Harry Potter lore. These "Focus Points" can also be viewed separate from this mode in six separate featurettes which run a total of 19 minutes. These place a lot of focus on visual FX and special effects makeup. The remainder of the extras are found on Disc 2. "The Seven Harrys" (5 minutes) examines the difficulties in shooting the scene in which multiple Harry's appear in order to confuse the enemy. "On the Green with Rupert, Tom, Oliver, and James" (14 minutes) shows four of the actors taking a golfing vacation. Why do I care about this? We see how Harry, Ron, and Hermione handles all of the chases through the woods in "Dan, Rupert and Emma's Running Competition" (3 minutes). "Codric's Hollow/The Harry and Nagini Battle" (6 minutes) takes on onto the set to see how an entire village was built indoors, which is then followed by a look at the next scene which has a CG fight. We see how "The Frozen Lake" (4 minutes) was created in a tank in a studio. The Disc contains eight DELETED SCENES which run about 11 minutes. Other than two short scenes between Harry and the Dursleys, these are pretty pointless. "Behind the Soundtrack" (4 minutes) shows composer Alexandre Desplat at work with his orchestra.

Review by Mike Long.  Copyright 2011.