Friday, March 10, 2006

ETC: But My Mom SAID I Could

So, we watched the latest Harry Potter movie last night. Baaaaad baaaaaaad baaaaaaaaaad movie. And by "baaaaaaaaaaaaad" I mean BAD. Let me say it again in case you haven't been paying attention:

bad

Rusty raised a good point while we were trying to ignore the vicariously embarrassing spectacle on our TV screen, which is, man, is Hogwarts an unsafe school or what? Like, would you send
your kids there? And this Tri Wizard Tournament, with the goal being to SURVIVE three challenges... call me namby-pamby, but isn't that the kind of thing you should clear with parents first?

We imagined the permission slip might look something like this:

Well, yeah, OF COURSE we signed. Do you think we want our kid to lose face in front of his friends? And also... dude, that's ETERNAL GLORY he's vying for. That's got to be worth something, don't you think?

11 comments:

landismom said...

yeah, how come you never hear about Cedric's father suing the school? I mean, Dumbledore certainly knew that Voldemort has been sniffing around Harry for years, there's no way that he could claim that the school didn't know about the risk.

I am such. a. geek.

But it's really your fault that I'm revealing it.

Tammy said...

Dang. I knew that word didn't look right when I typed it (I think I'm used to seeing it as "vying" and I made my assumption from that), but I was too lazy to look it up. And I kind of did rationalize it to myself that, even if it were wrong, it'd be just like a real typo-riddled school form. Weak, I know.

And never apologize for nitpicking! If we can't safely nitpick about spelling here, where can we?

... said...

But I want this movie to be good, seeing as I will have to watch it 20 or 30 times. So, yeah thanks snuffing out the flame of hope.

Anonymous said...

Especially since you need a permission slip to go to Hogsmeade on the weekend!

I guess maybe the Goblet is a kind of permission slip? Since it will only return a worthy champion?

--Deb said...

Okay, I didn't think this movie was that bad . . . although I knit half a sock while watching it in the theater, so my attention was a little divided. Considering the size of the book they had to condense, I thought they did a decent enough job--although the part with the dragon was way, way overdone, to a ridiculous degree. But it could just be me! I do enjoy Harry Potter, so I could have just been excited by a new "fix" while waiting for Book 7.

electriclady said...

I have to do the requisite HP geek-out here and say that, technically, only students who are "of age" (in the magical world, 17+) were allowed to enter the TriWizard tournament. (Harry's name being spit out was due to [sepulchral whisper] daaark maaagic.) So I suppose those kids wouldn't need permission slips for anything, since they are considered adults.

I didn't hate the movie, but I was really disappointed in the Dumbledore portrayal, too.

Anonymous said...

I actually liked this movie more than the others (which isn't saying a whole lot - I almost gave up on the series entirely after seeing how craptacular the first two movies were). My biggest complaint was the fact they cut the Quidditch World Cup to the point of evisceration. But yeah, I don't like Gambon as Dumbledore either. I'm usually a fan of his work, but his take on the character seems too absent-minded. RIP Richard Harris...

Tammy said...

Oh my god. Dumbledore (or as Rusty keeps accidentally calling him, "Dumbledorf") was the WORST. Jesus, I kept looking for chew marks on the scenery. The original Dumbledore was much better. He had a quiet dignity... I sort of thought of him as Gandalf Lite.

And yes, my complaint was with the movie, not the book. Watching it with Rusty, who's never read any of the books, revealed how shoddily put together this movie was. Rusty is a pretty on-the-ball movie viewer (unlike me, who, midway through any caper movie, has to have the plot recapped in full), and he couldn't follow half of the plot machinations.

And the EDITING. Oh my lord, some of the scene transitions were so terrible I kept thinking, I've seen student films better than this.

And the movie could have put less focus on all the hyper-irritating teen melodrama, mostly because it highlighted that this gang of kids CAN NOT act.

Jen said...

Okay, I feel comfortable saying this since this is totally a booky site, we're all book nerds, I'm with my people here:

They appear to have gotten around the whole permission slip angle by restricting the contestants to age 17+, 17 being the cutoff for adulthood in the wizarding world.

Before you ask, why yes, I do know it's make-believe.

But the rest of you are right. Someone please bring Richard Harris back to life, because while I can see Gambon doing OOTP Dumbledore, he is not fit for the role in HBP. Stupid cancer. And I think they could have quit, like, ADDING crap like the Ron/Harry dragon warning convo and the extended dragon chase and touched on things that will inform the future films, like the twins' joke shop, Fleur's veela-ness, Rita's trickery, or at least shown the damn world cup.

Anonymous said...

It's still better than Crash.

Anonymous said...

Heh. Harry Potter is, in my heart, my boyfriend, so I feel as though I'm pre-programmed to love the movies as much as I love the books. I really didn't like the ending of this movie, though. It felt so...abrupt and unfinished or something.