Harry Potter Review

Summer 2011

Genre: Family Fantasy adventure sequel.

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Alan Rickman, Micheal Gambon, Julie Walters, Mark Williams, Nick Moran, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Helena-Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Tom Felton, Helen McCrory, Jason Isaacs, David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Miriam Margoles, Kelly McDonald and John Hurt.

Running Time: 144 mins approx.

Certificate: 12A.

Seen At: Altringham.

On: Sunday, 17^th July, 2011.

After ten years, seven novels, and this – the eighth and final film – this is the end of the Harry Potter phenomenon, singularly the biggest and most commercially successful book and film franchise worldwide.

  Fans around the world have been waiting a whole decade for this final showdown between our young, bespectacled Harry and – You-Know-Who…

   Hogwarts School is no longer the safe haven it once was for students. In fact, it is now in a state of total lockdown – being run by none other that the sternest of potion masters – Alan Rickman’s Professor Severus Snape, who eventually shows us where he true allegiances lie.

   It is a customarily lip-curling performance from Rickman – there’s a definitive art to the exact way he accentuates his language – really chews on those words of malice, so that if he’s playing a villain, what you then have is this tremendous sense of power and authoritarianism. He’s certainly the aspect of the series that I’ll miss the most.

  Director David Yates has had to pull out all the stops to satisfy the millions of fans and he succeeds in doing so in suitably spectacular fashion – particularly as this final chapter, has the ultimate ‘Battle for Hogwarts’. So, in terms of the special effects, it has just about everything from spells to spiders and snakes to trolls. This is where the 3D becomes especially spellbinding, most notably during Harry and Voldermort’s final duel!

  It’s an oddly somber sensation when you realize that it won’t be coming back next year, so it’s just as well that it bows out with such spectacular flair and panache.

Rating: * * * *