Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Reviews

It's official. The midnight screenings are in. The beginning of the end is here. What will an entire generation do without our boy wizard? If the mania has reached such a fever pitch for the second-to-the-last movie, Lord help us for the last one. Here's what people are saying about the movie.

In case you weren’t one of the brave (crazy?) souls to make the midnight showing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1″ last night, here’s a “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” reviews roundup to help you decide if you need to rush right out and see the movie this weekend …

Entertainment Weekly: “I don’t know which had the greater effect: my real melancholy at the thought of looming finality, or the elegance of this necessarily dark and serious penultimate film, in which characters/actors we have watched since childhood are now resourceful young adults. But I do know I felt a swell of love and awe wash over me from the very first wickedly creepy scene until the profoundly moving last one.”

Washington Post: “‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1′ can’t be anything but unsatisfying. As the first part of the last movie in a 10-year franchise that has taken on almost theological meaning for a generation of readers and filmgoers, it’s meant to leave audiences wanting more. It’s half of a really good movie, full of the enchantment, emotion and incident for which the Potter series has become so fanatically cherished.”

New York Times: “The movie, in other words, belongs solidly to Mr. Radcliffe, Mr. Grint and Ms. Watson, who have grown into nimble actors, capable of nuances of feeling that would do their elders proud. One of the great pleasures of this penultimate ‘Potter’ movie is the anticipation of stellar post-’Potter’ careers for all three of them.”

Florida Times-Union: “In this next-to-last installment in the routinely splendid Potter franchise, the title is the only thing clunky. Some of the previous six films, as fine as they are, have tended to meander; a lot of things happen in them, but the plot barely budges.

“Not here: This story rushes ahead as it takes our young heroes across a desolate Britain that’s almost post-apocalyptic, so pervasive is the dark work of Voldemort.”

Vancouver Sun: “What should have been the breathless first half of the Harry Potter finale wraps with the promise of a stirring exit, but David Yates’s initial navigation of the Deathly Hallows odyssey runs into a few structural squalls. Yates does a pretty good job with the heavy lifting, but there’s not much poetry to this clean-and-jerk exercise that brings the story of the boy wizard one step closer to its ultimate conclusion.”

NDTV Movies: “This is the dreariest Harry Potter movie yet but what’s more problematic is, that it’s also the most arcane. Viewers who haven’t read the books or seen all the previous films will be lost in the complex plot, which involves the search for Horcruxes which are objects into which Voldemort has hidden parts of his soul and the search for the Deathly Hallows, three objects which make the person who possesses them death-proof.”