Film Review - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One

As with most of the other Harry Potter films, I booked my ticket in advance for the opening day - 19th November 2010. I was excited for weeks and the day itself went very fast as it happened to coincide with Children in Need. Me and Carol were booked in to see the 20:15 performance and decided to meet at Frankie and Benny's for 6:30pm and head over to the cinema half an hour before the start time.

Despite going along this early, we still ended up in a big queue! The showing was a sell out but we luckily managed to get good seats.

The critics had said how they felt this film was just there to set up the second part, which I think is a little unfair as the book itself has less action in the first half and more in the second, but you couldn't have the second part without the first. I feel that the action that there was in the film was very well done - the broomstick chase with all the Harry's at the beginning, the end to both Hedwig and Dobby were very sad, the death eaters arriving at the wedding party, Harry, Ron and Hermione taking Polyjuice potion to sneak into the Ministry of Magic and many other points throughout the film.

I was surprised at the amount of humour in it, but it did well to balance the very dark themes of this installment. There were moments were I felt the film could possibly have been awarded a 15 certificate, taking into consideration the death of the teacher and the torture of Hermione. Plus the random naked images of Harry and Hermione - what was that all about? For me personally though, I'm glad it was so dark and wasn't diluted down for the kids.

I very much enjoyed the film and can't wait to see Part 2 - I wanted to just carry on watching and I'm sort of hoping there will be the opportunity to watch both halves in the cinema next year :) There were a couple of moments missing in the film which I had loved in the book, most notably for me was Dudley saying goodbye to Harry and letting him know he didn't hate him - it was told so well in the book, but not touched upon in the film which was sad. I know they have so much to fit in, but I think it would have been a nice addition. One thing I particularly liked that wasn't in the book was where it showed Hermione wiping her parents memory of her and making them want to go to Australia - it was a very touching scene.

I am looking forward to seeing the film again and I award this film 9 out of 10