srah blah blah

I think it was really well-done. This morning I was trying to figure out what to write about it and I couldn't think of many complaints.

Bad

• Too much exposition:
  "Oh hello Harry. I'm Bill Weasley and we have never met before - in the movies anyway. I am going to get married to Fleur. This is her right here. Remember her? Look at my scar! This is where I got attacked by a werewolf."
  "We have that in common, because I, Remus Lupin, was also attacked by a werewolf. Here is my wife Tonks. I put a baby in her."
  BAM! INFORMATION DUMP! Fortunately Mad-Eye Moody seemed to be as annoyed by exposition as I was, because he kept telling people to knock it off.
• Ron always seems to be either out of breath or sweaty whenever delivering dialogue. Now I feel like I need to go back and watch the other movies to see if this is just how The Grint acts or what the deal is.
• Seeing Hermione and Harry make out is gross. I was prepared for that, although I would have liked them to have more clothing on. What's even grosser is that there was a point where I thought they were going to make out OUTSIDE of Ron's head. Stop that!
• There wasn't much time for mourning the deaths of Mad-Eye and Hedwig, which I think lessened their effect. And the movie didn't bother to mention that Snape de-eared George or show that he was involved in the attack. More Snape!

Good


• I liked that, for the first time, we got to see a tiny bit of Hermione's home life. It's mentioned in the book but we never really even see it there.
• Hedwig got a hero's death instead of just plummeting/exploding.
• I love Mafalda Hopkirk's/Hermione's outfit (see right).
• I was excited to see all the inner workings of the Ministry of Magic and my only disappointment is that I didn't get more. I hope there are a bunch of deleted scenes.
• I really liked the way they did "The Tale of the Three Brothers." I'd never thought about how that would be portrayed on film. I guess I just thought it would either be mentioned in dialogue or shown in flashback form. I like the way they did it.
• Rhys Ifans was weirdly attractive as the entirely unattractive Xeno Lovegood.
• I cried when Dobby died, and I don't even like Dobby that much. I feel like movie-Dobby is more charming than book-Dobby.
• The Ron/Hermione tension was well-played.

There were things that had to be cut or simplified, and I feel like I was more accepting of that in this movie than in some others, because the editing scissors weren't quite so heavy-handed as in some of the other movies and the cuts they did made sense. When you really think about it, there's no reason Dean Thomas has to be in the story or why Harry had to take Polyjuice potion (again...) and pretend to be Barny Weasley. I think that where cuts were made, it tended to be more of the fun, upbeat stuff (like the wedding preparations/wedding, Fred/George/Lee/etc on the radio, Elphias Doge's memories of Dumbledore), but the movie retains all the dark, grim stuff and the badassery.