Harry and his friends try to find and destroy the parts of Valdemort's soul, as the servants of evil take over the ministry of magic in preparation for ruling the world.

There is a very different feel to this movie, after the events of the last one. The movie has to cover a lot of ground, just like in the book, and it makes sense to split it into two. The first half is mostly setup, but has some very high stakes, as the Death-eater attack raises the stakes. Snape's deep involvement with Valdemort makes us wonder even more why Dumbledore trusted him. The most annoying part, though, is that while they do find a single hoarcrux, they can't destroy it. I'm with Ron in the desperation department -it takes so long in this first movie to get anywhere. On the other hand, we still have a lot of very interesting magic and a huge expansion of the wizarding world. Their infiltration into the ministry of magic, for example, was hliarious.

Really intense and very interesting. While the parts in the woods getting nowhere could have been shortened, it did add some interesting thoughts as to how Dumbledore actually expected them to get this job done. Until the very end, they barely destroy one hoarcrux! It's almost as if they'll never get the job done. And that's the point, isn't it? It's the countdown timer that better than a timer. It really focused on how bad the world has gone with fear, and how easy it is to give up.

Like the book it was based on, this movie is fairly boring in the middle. However, the opening scenes were very haunting, especially Hermione's goodbyes to her parents. The sequences at the end were also nicely done. But I agree with Ron, and it's a problem with the source material. There is no reason for them to wander all over England for so long. The characters don't grow or learn in all that time, though Harry and Hermione make a little progress. Dobby was, as always, a lot of fun to watch.

I guess having read the book recently gave me a new insight into what happens here, and I found it to be less long. I still agree with Ron that it's odd that Dumbledore didn't give any instructions, letting the kids figure it out on their own, chancing that they couldn't save the world, after all. But it's also in the style of all great wizards, to take a huge risk that will have a bigger payoff.

The movie was quite dark, but in a good way, I think. Still, most of it felt like filler, as the followers of Valdemort start to take over the magical world in preparation for taking over the muggle worlld. It was a little long while waiting in various places, and like Ron, I'm really impatient that they find more pieces of Valdemort's soul, but I'm wondering if that's not the point, after all. What kind of confrontation will be needed to solve this?

It's hard to rate this movie without seeing the second part. The movie was very well made, with stunning cinematography and wonderful character work. Unfortunately, there was a lot of waiting around. The time in the tent was interesting mainly because it was so much larger inside than out, but too much time was spent there. Might it have been nice to see various revelations that were spurred by something the characters were doing, instead of out of the blue? And why did they have to get captured at the end, if they could just run towards each other and teleport away? Aside from the necessity of the plot, of course.