Going out with a bang

Harry Potter and The Deathly
Hallows: Part 2
DIRECTED BY: David Yates
STARRING: Daniel
Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph
Fiennes
CERT: 12A

Well, here it is. Last stop. End of the line. Passengers in the rear of the train, please move forward in order to alight safely on the platform. Or as my Australian TomTom voice likes to put it, “You have reached your destination! Windows up, grab those sunnies, and don’t let the seagulls steal yeh chips.” Which can be a tad annoying when you’re in the wrong mood. I prefer the voice of Karl from Slingblade, “Ya done got there, boy. And I reckon ya didn’t kill nobody, mmmhhmmm.”
So here we are and it’s taken a while – ten years, a decade, a whole one tenth of the 21st century. Or, to measure the course of this series on a personal scale, when the first Harry Potter film was released, I had a full head of hair. And that, my friends, feels like a whole lifetime ago.
Of course, the stars of the Potter franchise will know that feeling well. When Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint first arrived on set, they were primary school kids who couldn’t really act but in a cute kind of way.
Now they’re all grown up, making some of us feel very old indeed. But their acting talents have never really matured along with them, and that has gone from being cute to being almost painful to watch. It doesn’t exactly help the production when your cast is not very good – even, as is the case in this final instalment, when the acting takes a back seat to the action.
Deathly Hallows: Part 2 picks up where Part 1 ended. Dobby is dead and our heroes lay him to rest. Though if it’s any consolation to the poor deceased goblin, by the time the end credits roll, he won’t be alone in his grave.
Harry’s gang have been hunting for the horcruxes, the assorted bits and pieces of Voldemort’s soul that happen to be scattered here and there for some good reason I’m unaware of, apart from an excuse for a treasure hunt. The lads have to find and destroy these dark prizes if they are to have any hope of defeating The Pale Fella With No Nose.
Meanwhile Voldemort (Fiennes) plays his trump card and gallops away with Dumbledore’s wand, making him virtually invincible and making the destructive finale at Hogwarts a bit of a bore.
Think of an old fashioned Western gunfight, but with endless bolts of lightning instead of bullets. Granted, the surrounding spectacle is very impressive – the towers and spires of the great old school take a fair hiding – but the final confrontation between these two great foes is a tad lame, when it should have been an epic event.  
There are other scenes where the film does impress – the raid on the Gringotts Wizarding Bank is great, and you can’t but cheer for a dragon who lights a fire under a few bankers.
The movie also brings old – and even dead – characters back for another run around the block so Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith), Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), Bellatrix Lestrange Helena Bonham Carter) and Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) rub shoulders with Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) and even good old Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) in a grand display of the British talent that propped the Potter world up at times when it hardly deserved their efforts. These guys don’t need to worry about future work.
But what about the young stars? Of the three, Emma Watson seems most likely to go on to better things but you can’t help thinking you might see all of them on some future episode of I’m A Celebrity or Former Child Actors In Rehab: Hermione’s Heroin Hell.
The sad reality is that, despite what everyone says about this being the end, we will most likely see these guys again in the next Harry Potter film. Certainly the ending suggests we will, and as we know, the studio accountants would be more than happy.