Harry Potter Part 7 Part 1 - AKA: HP7a

When I first read that the producers of the wildly (and mostly deservedly) successful Harry Potter series had announced their intention to split its final instalment into two parts I was immediately despondent. After the genuinely awful start to the Potter series the third through to the fifth films were exciting, dark when they needed to be and revealed their child stars as promising actors of the future. Much of the promise of those 3 middle films seemed to evaporate with the announcement that part 7 would be in two parts. There was only one reason to split the seventh film into two - money. Any talk of sticking to the original text is simply doublething on the part of the producers. The 4th, 5th and 6th books are both incredibly long texts and were both adequately reduced into screenplays of around the 140 minute mark.

I toyed with the idea of not going to see HP7a for this reasons and others. My experience of the original texts was one major reason. I was hugely bored with the first half of HP7 the book as it consisted almost entirely sneaking around bits of England hiding from baddies. Thankfully the second half of makes everything worthwhile - it has a wonderfully emotional finish and I recommend reading the lot. With this in mind I decided that I needed to see HP7a, since without it the payoff next summer wont be half as good. At least it wasn't going to be in 3D anyway. All this meant I went into the cinema with not the most open of minds - I was expecting to be disappointed.

The story of Harry Potter has moved on from its boarding school roots and for the first time in the series we are out of Hogwarts and into the unknown. Within the opening half hour Potter and his chums are thrown into mortal danger and are on the run from Voldemort and his cronies. The film sets itself up on a war footing from the outset, Potter and co are forced to go into hiding for fear that they are putting their loved ones in danger. They camp out in the woods, infiltrate the ministry of magic and fight against several dark mages to evade capture. It's a story in which the dangers are terrifyingly real and in which the quidditch of the early instalments seems like a twee sideshow by comparison. The film ends up being very true to the book and is full of a number of lovely touches - more of those later.

Before getting too carried away with praise though: the film is too long. For an adaptation of half of a book that isn't as long as some of the previous tomes in the series, over 150 minutes is just silly. I thought that we'd got over the need to include every little microcosm of the Potter-verse when we got to part 3. Apparently not, and we are subjected to a number scenes which could easily have been coalesced into dialogue asides or (forgive me for suggesting it) even a montage. An example is Bill Nighy's appearance to read out Dumbledore's will to the kids. It probably goes on for about 5 minutes and adds literally nothing that couldn't have been done by the kids talking about the event later. One part of the film that could be cut out but I'm glad they didn't is a cartoon-styled sequence in which Hermione tells a story of three brothers and the creation of the Deathly Hallows (the MacGuffins for part 2 btw). Some beautiful animation there and a credit to whomever on the production team is responsible.

Rather than being dull though, HP7a's long 'on the run in a tent' sequences take on the feeling of a character drama. Harry finds himself in the eye of a storm and is torn between facing his destiny and protecting his loved ones. Hermione is brave and resourceful, but knows that Harry must ultimately face his demons alone. Ron is best friend to both, but is tortured by thoughts of losing them to teenage lust. This three-way teenage melting pot of emotions and fears added to the physical dangers of dark magics is the recipe for a pretty bloody good drama. Much better than the book ever managed in my opinion.

Apart from the length and occasionally unnecessary sequences, the film is overall very enjoyable with a good mix of darkness, comedy and teen angst. It's the perfect way to set up the final battle of the next film and also fun to see loads of well-famous British actors with incredibly small bit parts. I'm looking forward to HP7b, roll on July 2011!