Given that I left the cinema practically slack-jawed in awe, and almost the whole of the film in some kind of rapture, this may not be tremendously objective… but I’ll try my best.

On the whole, I really, really liked HBP. I thought it was the best of the movies so far, and in order to assess this opinion I went home and re-watched PoA, my previous favourite, to see how they stacked up against each other. I definitely need to see HBP again before giving a definitive conclusion, but at this point I have to say that, given PoA had such a strong book as its base and HBP doesn’t, it is remarkable how good the latter movie is. And I think it is as good as, if not better, than the PoA movie.

I should preface this with a caveat that I’ve only read HBP once, when it first came out. I can’t remember a lot of things about the book, so missing things and niggly details didn’t bug me so much. And I did not go in expecting it to be anything like the book. If you do, you WILL be disappointed! If you’re prepared for something that departs significantly but still manages to capture the essence of the book and stands in its own right as a cracking good movie, you’ll enjoy it a lot more. Detailed review of things I liked and didn’t like below!

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS.

DO NOT READ!

…if you haven’t seen the film and don’t want to be spoiled. It’s safely cut for everyone reading this here directly, but if you’re reading this in Google Reader, beware.