Harry up and wait

The J.K. Rowling juggernaut is in town again, so don’t even think about watching anything else at your local cinemas; it’s just not possible, since every screen (at least during opening weekend) is taken up by Harry Potter and his spell-casting pals.

The funny thing this time around is that audiences  worldwide, since the movie was released simultaneously in hundreds of countries  are noticeably older, and not just including those kids who grew up on the seven-book series. Parents and grandparents are also lining up for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in droves, and one wonders why they’re bothering to express interest now that the whole phenom is winding down. Not a single Harry Potter fan doesn’t know pretty much exactly what will unfold on the screen, since they’ve obsessively consumed each book practically before the ink from the printing presses dried, and will gladly irritate you to numbness with minute details about the series until you’re ready to scream “Obliviate!” at them.

Cheer up, Hermione (Emma Stone): you’ve got $70 million in the bank back home.

Nope, I’m not a huge fan (obviously), but one thing you can say about the movie series: it’s grown darker and more grown-up as each installment hits the big screen. Remember when Home Alone director Chris Columbus tackled the first one, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? That was like a day pass at the kiddie ride section of Disneyland. These days, watching Harry Potter movies is like strapping yourself into a motion simulator ride through Hell Itself. School’s out, and baby, it’s cold and dark out there.

In this installment, our intrepid wizards have left Hogwarts; Dumbledore is dead, so Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are on the trail of three missing Horcruxes, objects that could allow Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) to attain immortality. You can practically hear the military drums rumbling as Harry, Hermione and Ron suit up, grab their duffel bags and head out for the final battle… well, not quite final yet, fans will have to wait until the summer of 2011 to get their ultimate Potter fix.

This one ends tantalizingly with Voldermort getting a key item in his hands that will put his final confrontation with Harry on equal terms.

But before that, our trio meets up with Order of the Phoenix allies who attempt to hide Harry from Death Eaters by transforming themselves into decoys (a great scene in which seven or so Harrys fill the screen).

After an exciting opening, the movie slips into a lengthy coma for its middle section, in which the trio head out (excuse me, “Disapparate”) into a forest where they are presumably safe from Death Eaters and try to destroy the first captured Horcrux. (For non-fans, all this invented language is strictly mumbo-jumbo; for fans, it’s as intricate and meaningful as the holy gospels.)

But what happens between Harry, Hermione and Ron out there in the forest is much more interesting than the occasional barrage of CGI apparitions and skull-splitting noise quaking the theater. No, they don’t get into a kinky three-way; but Ron, wearing the Horcrux around his neck, becomes deeply jealous of his mates’ perceived closeness and stalks off to find his family. Then, director David Yates has Harry and Hermione do something that’s not in the Rowling book at all  they slow dance, which has divided Potter fans as to what’s really going on: Is Harry testing the waters, seeing if Hermione and he are meant to be? Is he merely trying to cheer her up? (She’s quite sulky throughout this installment; you’d think that having $70 million in the bank after playing Hermione for so long would cheer her up.) The geek world is divided on this very important matter.

Weight of the world: Lots of time spent showing Harry brooding by the sea.

Then Yates goes even further, adding a scene in which Ron hallucinates a vision of Harry and Hermione embracing… naked! Gulp. This (plus the scary imagery) was enough for me to conclude that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was not appropriate viewing for my eight-year-old Catholic school daughter.

There is, however, a wonderful animated film-within-a-film, as Hermione reads “The Tale of the Three Brothers” from Tales of Beetle the Bard (an actual kid’s book put out by Rowling; she really is a master of self-marketing): Swiss animator Ben Hibon’s cartoon is ethereal, puppet-like, and very different in style from anything in previous Potter films, and holds the key to destroying the Horcruxes.

Much talk about the film, though, has shifted to its box office grosses, which tend to be heftier when you open worldwide. Yes, $330 million is a pretty big haul for a single week. But there are more important things going in the world, I’m sure.

Director Yates, for his part, manages to deepen the implications of the story (“raise the stakes,” as Butch Dalisay might say) by highlighting the fascistic Ministry of Magic and its attempts to place the Muggle realm under its jackboot heels. The costumes and imagery say “Nazi Germany” to me, but might mean considerably less to younger, history-challenged Potter fans, who perhaps believe such an agency actually exists.

In short, the bigger challenges in Harry Potter are shown to be more important, more earth-shaking, more life-or-death than ever, while the human problems between Harry, Hermione and Ron remain pretty much the same. This, of course, is close to Rowling’s original intention. There are allusions to deeper resentments  Ron says Harry doesn’t know what it’s like to risk anything because his parents are already dead; Harry seems troubled that his mission is endangering so many others; Hermione is, well, in a deep sulk over something.

He’s baaaack: Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) gets mentioned more than once in The Deathly Hallows.

There are funny bits showing Hermione acting peeved at Ron, whom she secretly loves (though these British kids never admit such things out loud, even though the world is collapsing around them). This human level, ultimately, has to be the thing that maintains our interest in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because a lot of it is shellacked over with the kind of gray/blue color scheme that is meant to impart foreboding and dread but starts to look very dull and repetitious after an hour or so. Expect things to get darker  or at least grayer and bluer  in Part 2.