And by "review" I mean a disjointed list of my thoughts during the movie.
First of all: for the end of the Harry Potter series, this movie was surprisingly low-key. I don't mean boring, but it was mostly talking. The actions scenes were shortened (oh hey look a dragon, let's jump on and fly to a lake!) or done (quite effectively, to be sure) in silence or with the score covering the noise. Mostly, this was done well, and the fights were quite satisfying, especially the Molly/Bellatrix exchange.
The biggest problem this movie has is kind of a bizarre one. First of all, the movie is only two hours long. You would think that if you're going to split it up into two halves, you'd take advantage of that. Still, I understand that you can't just squash a book into a movie verbatim. This is, of course, the biggest complaint many have with the first two movies: they follow the books too closely.
However, the things that were cut/changed in the movie just make no sense. First of all, as you can tell from the title, apparently eye color is a SACRED GOD-GIVEN TRAIT THAT NO MAN CAN TOUCH. We spent approximately half an hour of movie time zoomed in on Harry, Voldemort, or Aberforth's faces and NONE of their eyes are the correct color. And those are the three whose eyes are most prominently described in the books (green, red, and blue, respectively). For all I know, Sirius's eyes are completely wrong too, but I feel much less passionately about that because it's not like Snape was in love with Sirius (THAT WE KNOW OF) or Harry thought McGonagall was looking through the shard of the mirror.
And while we're on the subject of Snape, really? His tears? Did you run out of special effects money, Warner Bros.? You couldn't afford one measly cloud of silver memory light? We had to watch Snape manfully squeeze out a tear into a random flask Hermione couldn't be bothered to conjure up? However, the Snape/Lily Pensieve scene wasmasterfully done, bravo bravo. No complaints there.
Also, for about five minutes I was seriously afraid that Ron or Hermione was going to kill Nagini, and THAT IS NOT OKAY. But never fear, it was Neville. (spoilers! neville kills nagini)
I think if the directors had asked Alan Rickman to speed up his delivery a little (If. Anyone. Knows. The. Location. Of. Potter. Step. Forward) then we could have gotten to actually see Fred die, instead of walk in on him having a slumber party next to Lupin and Tonks. Wait, pause, actually, we DID get to see Tonks die! NEWS FLASH, WB: YOU DIDN'T EVEN CAST TONKS UNTIL MOVIE FIVE. NO ONE IS INVESTED IN HER. And why did we spend two scenes explaining how Harry owns the Deathstick? One was plenty!
Speaking of the Elder Wand, oops! Guess Harry will have to use Draco Malfoy's wand forever, since we forgot to repair his original one. Unless Hermione didn't accidentally break it in Part One: Camping Fever, which I never actually saw. Very possible.
Has Goyle always been black? Or did he just drink the wrong potion before this movie? Also, when did Cho move to Scotland?
And did anyone notice that Hermione literally did not do anything during this movie? Even when she stabbed the Hufflepuff Cup, Ron had to tell her to do it and coach her through the process, then save her from the big scary snake that Neville should have killed two scenes ago. Well, I guess it was Hermione's idea to ride the dragon. And she threw a rock at one point.
Special mention has to go out to Helena Bonham Carter, quite seriously, for a wonderful job of pretending to be Hermione being Bellatrix. That was an excellent performance.
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