Sunday, July 17, 2011

Get in touch with your inner twelve-year-old

Ross Douthat enjoyed Deathly Hallows: Part II. The trick, he seems to be saying, is to have the appropriate expectations. From his review:
.... What Deathly Hallows the book proved, in the overplotted and underwhelming way it wrapped things up, is that the Potter saga is best appreciated without the Tolkien-Shakespeare-Dickens baggage that some of its more enthusiastic adult admirers tried to pile on top. That’s not an insult to Rowling, whose work will certainly outlast its small coterie of highbrow haters. It’s just a warning that future readers should approach her books as children’s books, rather than freighting them with unreasonable grownup expectations.

Equipped with a more appropriate sense of what the Potter saga is and isn’t, I had a lot of fun at Deathly Hallows: Part II. Directorial competence, British thespians, digital dragons — what’s not to like? ....

When Deathly Hallows the book came out four years ago, the entertainment writer Dan Kois marshaled a battalion of perceptive criticisms and then added: “I freely admit that 12-year-old me would have thought this was about the greatest book ever written.” Get in touch with that inner 12-year-old, and Deathly Hallows the movie will seem pretty awesome too. [the review, probably behind a subscription wall]
Film: The Sunset of Magic by Ross Douthat - National Review Online

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