My sort-of review, but more just relating an experience (minor spoilers for non-book readers)
When I went to see a midnight premiere screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, I knew that I was going to witness a lot of enthusiastic Potter fans responding to the memorable climactic moments from the final book that made it to the screen. It was this potential audience energy that made me decide to see the film on that particular night in the first place. I was not surprised to see that the crowd for this screening was largely made up of younger people, in their late teens and early twenties. Of course, there were also people of all different age groups there, including some from my own venerable range of late thirties/early forties, but the lion's share of the audience milling around the theater lobby that night were student-aged. Understandable for a midnight screening on a Thursday night during summer break for high schools and colleges, while most older working folk would have to be in the office Friday morning.
As I and my similarly Gen X-aged companions sat down in the theater for the long wait until the movie actually started, we had a few moments where we made the predictable complaints about the impatient young audience surrounding us. Those damn kids! Being all loud and silly and texting on their phones constantly. If they didn't settle down when the movie started, I was going to stand up, shake my metaphorical cane, and tell them to get the hell off my lawn, or something to that effect. Eventually the movie did start and after the initial cheers died down everyone was immediately engrossed. The dialog for the film seemed subdued and quiet in many scenes, and it had the desired result of keeping viewers attentive and absorbed. I won't bother going into the specifics of the movie itself, as that has been done in many available reviews already. Suffice to say that I found it immensely enjoyable and an excellent end to the Harry Potter movie series. As usual with these films, there were certain story elements that could be best appreciated by those who had read all the HP books, while other elements seemed to get a bit too quickly passed over -- again, mostly from the point of viewers who may have also read the books. However, the movie struck a fair balance overall for both those steeped in literary Potter minutiae and those who have only watched the films. The acting was consistently outstanding, most notably that of Ralph Fiennes as the evil Voldemort and Alan Rickman in his final, truly moving performance as tragic potions master Severus Snape.
As expected, the audience reactions to the most powerful onscreen scenes did not disappoint. Ron and Hermione's kiss was a crowd-pleaser and Mrs. Weasley's appropriation of Sigourney Weaver's "bitch" line from Aliens got the required raucous cheers. However, it was during the scene in the ethereal King Cross Station that I was struck by something. During this quiet, thoughtful scene between the disembodied Harry and Dumbledore, the theater was dead silent. You could have literally heard a pin drop as the audience was riveted to the images on the screen. It was then that I was suddenly reminded that most of these people had grown up with the Harry Potter books and movies over the last ten years or more. I read the books as an adult and thus always enjoyed and critiqued them from an adult point of view (albeit an adult sci-fi/fantasy nerd point of view). These audience members all around me were children back when the first Potter books were published, and now they mirrored the ages of the young adult actors onscreen that they had literally grown up with over the first decade of the 21st century. As I looked around the theater and saw the tears and heard the sniffles of the Millennial Generation, I realized they were experiencing something I couldn't fully experience myself, and I envied them.
By the time the now-famous caption "Nineteen Years Later" appeared onscreen, eliciting cheers from those viewers in the know and a few gasps of surprise from those who weren't, I had prepared myself to see the Harry Potter characters represented in my own age range. While Hollywood effects magic wasn't quite good enough to hide the fact that the actors under the makeup and digital tweaking were still quite a bit younger and more vibrant-looking than myself, I still felt a strong kinship to the characters in that final scene. I also felt a deeper kinship to the young majority of moviegoers in that theater, and I think that might be the greatest compliment I can give the film.
tl;dr - rating: 9/10
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