Hey, Things Must Be Looking Up- I'm Talking About Harry Potter!

[poliphilo]

We watched Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets last night- Ailz on her nine-inch bed-side TV and me on the wide screen at home. Afterwards we discussed it on the phone.

What did you think?

It was fun.

Yes- fun.

I like the Harry Potter films. Like not love. I don't find myself getting drawn into that world- enjoyable as it is- and I don't identify with any of the characters. As I've said before, I actually spent my teenage years at a faux-gothic boarding school in the middle of nowhere and- well- I find Rowling's vision a little starry-eyed.

God, but I bet all the other kids really resent and hate Harry and his chums for repeatedly saving the world and being feted and feasted at the end of the day!

Bloody, little, do-gooding teachers' pets!

And all the stories are exactly the same- and all the villains far too easy to defeat and that wimpy little Malfoy kid must be the least threatening (and worst-acted) screen villain in the history of the movies. All you have to do is look at him funny and he falls over.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

The movies are fun - that's a good word. Hollywood's picturing of Rowling's books is much as I pictured it, and yet...

I never went to a boarding school, so I admit I lack that particular experience and prejudice. I personally find Malfoy (the kid in the movie) silly, but the character in the book pretty scary. Same with Snape. I guess what you can see is much less scary than what you are prompted to imagine.

I enjoy the books. I don't care who says they are badly written, I am of the many who say that it IS good that someone got American children reading again. They are fun to read...and yet, in the last one I found myself getting as teary eyed and upset as if they were real.

Yep, I agree with you - for the movies, FUN is the word.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There are two problems with little Malfoy. The first is he can't act. The second goes deeper- that every time he has a run-in with any of Potter's crew he comes a-cropper. For him to be a convincing villain he ought to be winning every battle except the final, decisive ones.