Harry Potter marathon

So, hands up who has seen and enjoyed the Harry Potter movies or books... [looks around the room] Right, well you will all notice that my hand is not up. I was never drawn to the series. While most of my school were reading the books, I was more interested in music and drama than reading. It would take another series to get me back in to reading, but might talk about that another time.
Because I hadn't read the books, I wasn't too fussed about seeing the films. I thought that they were aimed at fans of the book series so I was not interested. They seemed childish to me and therefore uninteresting. I was finishing school, looking at starting a degree, it was time to start putting childish things behind me and that included popular culture. Besides, I was never one to follow trends!

However, I do enjoy a good movie marathon.

The other day while browsing my Cineworld app for something to watch over the weekend, I spotted that they were reshowing one of the older HP films. I looked at the day before and the day after and sure enough, they were showing all the movies in order one each day right up until the preview of the latest and last film. I love challenges and watching films so I decided to make myself watch one Harry Potter film every day for a week.

To my utter surprise and amazement, Cineworld were doing a special bulk deal for people like me. I managed to get 7 cinema tickets for £21. For anyone living in the UK who has paid £9 for a cinema ticket, knows that to get 7 for double that is quite good.

Well, here goes, my evaluation of the Harry Potter series:

Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone
First off, my disappointment with this film is that we never actually get to meet the philosopher. While the credits were rolling my anger at the misleading title was palpable, but alas, I digress. We did get to see a stone, which was the main point of the film.

Overall, it's an alright movie, made in the early naughties with poor CGI and young actors who haven't developed yet. However, for child actors, they were believable and didn't overact as much as I thought they would.

There were some 'in' jokes that I felt were added for the book reader, which I didn't quite get. Also, I seemed to be the only one to laugh at the punch lines as everyone else must have seen the movie before. Hagrid was the character that saved the movie for me. Portrayed by Robbie Coltrane, he played the jolly fat man who befriends the team of ragamuffins. His catchphrase "Oh, I shouldn't have told you that" was predictable but charming and he seems like a character that all grow to love. Naming a giant vicious 3-headed dog "Fluffy", that's so Hagrid!

The one thing that I didn't like was how often they poked fun at the Irish kid. Always blowing stuff up and making a mess of himself. Or else Hagrid describes a jolly gambling fellow down the pub... Irish again. Of course the Scottish guy had to be tall, handsome and good at sports. You won't poke fun at the Scots Rowling, but it's ok for the Irish?!

It was very much a movie set as part of a series. As a stand alone movie, it lacked the 'introduction-setting of characters-exciting incident-end' process that most movies go for. It delved into this erratic flow of story which felt like setting the scene for future movies to come. Hopefully, the next one finishes what the first one started.

Also, I know it sounds like nit-picking, but if I paid money to go and see a game of Quidditch and a Seeker grabbed the Golden Snitch within the first... um.... 40 minutes, I would ask for my money back! Having a Snitch is like having a 'cheat' button on video games, victory doesn't taste as sweet if you don't earn it.

Anyway, it's time for this muggle to head to bed. A long weekend of relaxing and watching movies ahead of me. [Crawls under invisibility cloak]

[update coming soon]