Warning: This review CONTAINS SPOILERS. Seriously. Don’t read if you haven’t seen the movie or read the books.
I grew up with Harry Potter. Alongside him, is more appropriate actually. I picked up the first book from Barnes and Noble at the age of 9, and I remember the anticipation as each book came out. Each midnight release as my friend Emma’s mom, Ann, bought us root beers and cookies at the Barnes and Noble café while we trooped around in big rimmed glasses with lightning bolt scars drawn on our heads, awaiting 12 AM when the book would finally be in our hands.
As Harry grew and adventured and experienced, I did too. I felt the pangs of first love, the loss of old friends, the joys of new ones with a fictional character who was as real as anything to me. As I read the seventh and final book cover to cover last year, I felt like a piece of my childhood was gone. I was finally grown up.
The movie franchise, however I might feel about them, has been a bit backwards. As each film has been released I’ve been less and less excited. I thought they started out splendidly. I remember tearing up in the theater at the age of thirteen when I heard Sir Richard Harris mutter the line, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” I was terrified of the basilisk, and in love with Kenneth Branaugh as Gilderoy Lockhart. But as the kids grew up in the films and the CGI was relied on more and more, the magic was slowly lost for me. Especially in Movie 5, Order of the Phoenix.
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