selenay | Harry Potter OttP film (Reply)

Saw the Harry Potter film at the weekend and I really enjoyed it. It's my least favourite of the books - too much unnecessary stuff, overuse of the capslock of rage - so I was kind of hoping that the film would improve on the book.

And it did.

It condensed down JKR's worst excesses without leaving out too many touches that I'd liked. It's never going to be perfect, but I'm very happy with the result. The good sign was that, on leaving, I was surprised to find out just how long the film had been. It didn't feel that long when I was watching it.

The Ministry of Magic battle was excellent. OK, I missed the time thingy and the baby-headed man, but overall it was excellent. Except for Sirius dying. Why does he have to do die every time? :-(

Sirius was lovely in the film *sniff*

Harry was angry, but not uncomfortably so. It worked for me.

And Umbridge was truly nasty.

The number of times Harry had to do detention with her was rather brushed over, but that's possibly my only complaint and one of the big problems with the book was the amount of time JKR devoted to describing each of Harry's detentions. I can't have it both ways :-)

I did miss the Quidditch stuff, but they gave me a fantastic Fred and George leaving school scene so that more than makes up for it :-) The Weasley twins are fantastic.

I spotted Percy lurking in the background with the Minister, although he wasn't mentioned by name. Hopefully devoted watchers will have spotted him, although it might not be obvious that his presence with the Minister signals the divide in the Weasley family. It might have been good to have something - even just one comment - about Percy. Oh, well.

Overall, it was a good film and I enjoyed it much more than OttP the book. I really enjoyed HBP so I'm assuming that I won't enjoy the film of it as much, but that remains to be seen.

Just wondering whether HBP is going to be suitable for kids. I would have said OttP wasn't really suitable for the five year-olds I saw in the cinema and I'm wondering how many of them had nightmares afterwards. HBP will be even more frightening for them. Of course, it's their parents who shouldn't be taking them and it makes me a little frustrated to see parents take little kids to films that are patently unsuitable for them.

Those are probably the same parents who raised a ruckas about Torchwood last year, so possibly they're just people who don't learn well and pay no attention whatsoever to what they're letting their kids see.

Only two more days until I have a copy of book 7 in my sticky little paws!