The received wisdom was that the even-numbered entries in the pre-reboot Star Trek series were better than the odd-numbered ones. That held up, too, until the 10th and final one mothballed the Enterprise for seven years. No such problems with the Harry Potter series, which hits six with his to-do with the half-blood prince. They’re all pretty much of the same quality—the same, consistently uninteresting quality.
I’ve come not to praise Harry Potter, but with two installments (two!) of the seventh and final chapter to come there’s no use burying him until 2011. Mind you, I’m not entirely immune to his saga. If my daughter were older I’d relish a minimum 2.5-hour babysitter once a year. (Who says kids have short attention spans? A different story for this parent, who gets antsy at the first sight of the ritual Quidditch match.) That Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith are now household names among tweens is nothing to sneeze at, either, and Jim Broadbent is amusing in this one. But I’m pretty much a Muggle about it, maybe because I never cracked open one of the books, and maybe because I’m too old for this enchantment, whereas I grew up with Star Wars and was familiar with the Lord of the Rings trilogy from a young age.
A friend says I should at least find it interesting that the series gives us a set of young actors that we can watch growing up year in and year out. In real life, though, Harry has waved his, err, magic wand onstage (I saw it with my own eyes), Hermione has become a hottie, Ron survived swine flu, and they’re all college age. A lot happens in the movies yet nothing ever seems to touch them, and they learn the same lessons over and over again, as if Hogwarts was some sort of remedial school for slow-witted sorcerers. To be fair a certain, mildly self-deprecating self awareness has crept in, as when Ron, when asked why he and his mates are always in the thick of it, responds, “Believe me we’ve been asking ourselves the same thing for six years.” (Was that straight from the book, or a cry for help from the golden cage that adapter Steve Kloves, who once upon a time wrote and directed The Fabulous Baker Boys, has built for himself?) (more…)
I’ll admit, first and foremost, that I’ve been more a fan of the Harry Potter films than I have the books. While I admit the books are enjoyable (I’ve read the first four), I find them rather repetitive and not quite as fleshed out in some ways as I think they could be–which is saying something, considering the epic lengths at which they mark off.
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May 1), starring Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber, directed by Gavin Hood.