Nominated for: Best Art Direction, Best Make-up and Best Visual Effects (Part Two)
I'm just going to go ahead and review both halves together since I saw them pretty much back-to-back. So, it opens up with Bill Nighy giving a speech and all the kids very dramatically contemplating their lives and saying good-bye to loved ones in preparation for the coming battle with the Big Bad himself.
Harry, Hermione, and Ron are looking for the rest of the objects that hold bits of Voldemort's soul which are called horcruxes. They get chased all over London after Ron's brother's wedding gets crashed and end up on an extended camping trip after breaking into the Ministry of Magic and stealing a locket horcrux from Dolores Umbridge.
They camp for 90% of the rest of the first half. It is very boring.
Ron gets hurt and, in the finest tradition of fantasy plots, they give the weakest member the medallion made of pure evil. He subsequently becomes convinced that Harry and Hermione are hooking up behind his back (which, let's face it, everyone knows they'd make a better couple) and storms off, leaving them alone to find something that will smash the locket.
Harry almost gets eaten by an old lady and Hermione gets a copy of Dumbledore's unauthorized biography.
During watch one night, Harry sees a deer made of blue light and follows it to a frozen pond. At the bottom is a sword that can destroy the locket so Harry joins the Polar Bear Club but can't find the hole in the ice to get out again. Things look bleak but Ron pulls his head out of his ass and saves him. Then they destroy the horcrux.
After that, stuff starts to blur together for me. There's a neat little animated sequence narrated by Rhys Ifans about the titular Deathly Hallows, which are three objects that were given to wizards by Death. Then the kids get captured and end up in Bellatrix's basement. They rescue John Hurt (who, to be honest, I had completely forgotten was in this series) and a banking goblin. The goblin bargains for the sword in exchange for sneaking the kids into Bellatrix's safe deposit vault where the fifth horcrux is. Then he abandons them to die and they escape by releasing the guard dragon. Which I'm sure caused some sort of ecological crisis.
But now they're back where they started, with a horcrux and no means of disposing of it. Meanwhile, Voldemort has gotten ahold of the Elder Wand, one of the Hallows and massed an army to destroy Hogwarts. Dumbledore's brother gives them shit about not really knowing what the hell they're fighting for but then shows them a secret passage into Hogwarts.
That's all the exposition.
Jesus.
Most of the second half is one gigantic battle scene that's actually pretty nifty to watch so I'm not going to spoil too much of it. I will say that I kept laughing at inappropriate times but there were a couple of scenes where I couldn't help it.
**SPOILERS FROM A FOUR YEAR OLD BOOK**
1) Snape's dead memories. Where he accuses Dumbledore of raising Harry "like a pig to the slaughter", all I could think of was Harry Plopper from The Simpsons Movie. That's some funny shit.
2) Harry dies and shows up on the set of Minority Report. Under a bench is the curled-up form of the bit of Voldemort's soul that had been in him this whole time (surprise!) that is now dead. It straight-up looked like a whole barbecued chicken with Ralph Fiennes' face. Hi. Lari. Ous. That one I laughed so hard I worried about retribution from angry Harry Potter fans.
**END SPOILERS**
I've never been a huge fan of this series, finding it tolerable at best. Part Two is probably the best film of the lot but Part One is too boring for words. Probably the most positive thing I could say about it is that it's over. For good.
Or until Rowling loses the copyrights and they make 3000 unnecessary sequels and spin-offs. I'll most likely be dead by then (it's +75 years from the death of the author in England, I think) so even that will be someone else's problem.
Oh! And whoever nominated the first half for an Oscar for Art Direction deserves to be shot. That was some murky shit. Visual Effects, maybe, but not Art Direction.
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