The Muggle Speaks

As Best Friend (and currently still my only reader) is fully aware, I have, at long last, joined the ranks of those who love the Harry Potter books.  It's not that I didn't love them before, I just hadn't read them.  At first I didn't think I would like them, and then I was kind of turned off by all the hoopla (I have this attitude where I tend to hate anything that everyone else loves.  Also known as my rebellious behavior disorder) but I finally let curiosity take over.

I started reading over the 4th of July weekend.  Picked up the first book at approximately 8:00 pm Saturday night... and refused to quit reading until I finished it.

yes 1:00 a.m. is a big deal to me, I'm a morning person

Had the second book done before lunch on Sunday.  Tried to finish the third one yet Sunday night but

that's a flashlight up by my head, get your mind out of the gutter

I had finished the fifth book four days after I picked up the first one.  And then I was stuck.  My boyfriend had lent me books 1-5 but told me I had to come back for the last two.  Why he felt compelled to trick me into coming back, I'll never know.  Of course I'll gladly see him again, even without bribes.  Well, we did go for quite a while without seeing each other over the last couple years... but... okay yeah maybe he did have a good idea.  Whatever.  Not the point of this post.

I still don't have books 6 & 7 yet, but over the weekend ABC Family channel showed the first 5 movies.  I missed most of the first one... just caught the last half hour or so.  And Order of the Phoenix is recording right now as I type.  But I saw all of 2, 3 and 4.  I had told Best Friend last week I wanted to watch at least one of the movies, mostly because I wanted to see what Quidditch looks like (I had a pretty good idea in my head from the descriptions in the books but wanted to see how they did it in the movies) and I really wanted to get the pronunciation of Hermione firmly cemented in my head!  Anyway, Best Friend wanted to know what I thought of the movies, and rather than cluttering up her inbox and having an un-updated blog, I figured I'd do it this way.

Wow...

I hope I never do that again.

Now... on to the review!

Quidditch was pretty much what I was figuring.  Although as an avid sports lover, I was kind of disappointed they didn't show more of the game itself.  Maybe I missed that by missing the first movie... it's first in line in my Netflix Queue, hopefully by Friday.

And I knew how to pronounce Hermione, my brain just didn't like to play along.  But now I think it's pretty well implanted in the gray matter.

As for everything else... I am SO glad that the movies pretty much stuck to the plots of the books.  I woulda been so pissed if they'd gone on some great adventure that was not only not in the books but didn't even fit with the storyline.  Thank goodness for that!  They obviously did have to skip a lot of stuff because seriously how can you cram a 900 page book into a 2 hour movie?  Yeah.  Also, I'm pretty sure this is a big reason for not showing like an entire Quidditch match.  Not to mention I think flying broomsticks are not real so that would have been a challenge too.  Maybe they are real and I'm just a stupid Muggle.  Wait, I'm getting off topic.  Anyway, while I totally understand that they had to cut some stuff, there were a few places where I was left feeling that they had glossed over or completely ignored something I felt was pretty important.  And worse yet, there was at least one time where I felt like they left a pretty stinkin big plot hole.  Don't ask, I don't remember what it was now.  If I think of it, I'll post an update.

Update - I know somewhere that I feel like they completely skipped over some important plot points.  See film: The Order of the Phoenix.  See part: all.  No, really.  There were so many places that I was just like "wait a minute, how the hell did we get here?" and if I hadn't read the book I wouldn't have understood why the characters were behaving as they were.  This movie was probably the most disappointing of them all so far. 

Okay, here's the thing that drove me the most nuts out of it all though.  They did point out that the young wizards weren't supposed to do magic outside of Hogwarts.  Uncle Vernon was fully aware of it, Harry got in trouble for it, etc.  And yet when Harry was doing his middle-of-the-night homework at the Muggle house, he was reading by wand light and they even made a big deal out of it with him having to re-light it every 3 seconds.  There are other times when wands illuminate and they stay lit, so what was with the constant repeating of the Lumos?  Another example was after Harry's first Floo ride and his glasses broke, Hermione was the one to fix them.  WTF?  Seriously.  So what, you can't do magic when it lends itself to a storyline but it's okay when it serves to remind stupid moron moviegoers that this is a movie about magic?  I mean in the books, Harry was doing his homework by flashlight and one of the Weasley parents fixed his glasses.

Although there is even a little confusion on that topic in the books, in my opinion.  Hermione said she'd done some charms at home before the start of their first year.  Of course she probably didn't know the rules yet then... but still.  And I'm pretty certain the Weasley twins were doing all sorts of shit, with their joke stuff.

But I'm getting nit-picky.

For the most part I liked the movies.  Like I said, thankfully they stuck to the storylines.  And I think they did a good job of casting the actors.  There weren't really any times where I was seriously all "WTF, that person looks/acts NOTHING like they should" and going back and rereading now after the movies is actually a little easier because I have a picture of the characters in my head.  (from my somewhat disjointed and incomplete viewings I don't really feel qualified to comment on old Dumbledore vs new Dumbledore)  And the special effects were good too, not nearly as hokey as they could have been! 

All in all I like books better than movies though.  Not just here, but always.  And here.