This Review of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is the Most Pointless Article I've Ever Written

Look, if you're a Harry Potter fan, you're going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 no matter what I or any other critic says. But for what it's worth, it's a fantastic movie, the best film in the series and about as perfect as entertainment ever gets.

It's also a more than fitting conclusion to an epic tale that has revolutionized the worlds of both books and movies. It's easy to forget just how marginalized the genre of fantasy was before J. K. Rowling came along.

What makes the movie so good? It has all the best features of the best Harry Potter movies so far: great acting, great action, great special effects.

But director David Yates and writer Steve Kloves (who have worked on the last four Harry Potter films together) also had a choice: had they made a straightforward adaptation along the lines of the first two Potter movies, they would surely have pleased the movie studio, and probably many fans as well.

Instead, Yates and Kloves reached for the stars, making something for the ages. And at this point, they have such complete mastery of this material that they succeeded pretty much completely. The movie is a series of scenes that are almost breathtaking in their beauty and, yes, sometimes even subtly: a conversation between Harry and the Grey Lady (a ghost) is almost ballet-like dance between the two amid shadows and wind. A chase through the Room of Requirement is another perfectly choreographed dance, with fire this time.

When a major character is killed by Voldemort, the way the scene is shot, we mostly only hear it and see it through a clouded glass window. It's both daring and much more effective than had we seen the killing outright.

And the scene when we see Snape's life through his tears in the pensive is exactly as heartbreaking as it should be.

The movie doesn't have a lot of laughs (as befitting the story), but Harry gets a hilarious line early on, when he says, "When have any of our plans actually worked?" — a nod to the fact that most of the events of the previous six books were just a set-up, mostly arranged by Dumbledore, for this final confrontation.

I confess, I've sometimes been frustrated in previous books and movies by author J. K. Rowling's tendency to resort to contrivances to solve sticky plot situations. There are a few of them here as well (one involving Narcissa Black, Draco's mother; one involving the Ravenclaw diadem). But in fairness to Rowling, the movie is also a reminder what an amazing, and amazingly detailed, world she has created. The conclusion to the epic story all hangs together, maybe even more effectively than in the books, by sheer virtue of its audacity and heart.

I also have to give credit to Helena Bonham Carter who — let's face it — is having one of the best stretches of any film actress ever. She's appeared (to raves) in several of the top-grossing movies of all time, Alice in Wonderland and the final two Harry Potter movies, and she co-starred and was nominated for an Oscar for this year's Best Picture winner, The King's Speech.

Well, she's terrific here too. There's a scene where Hermione magically mimics Bellatrix Lestrange's appearance, so Bonham Carter is playing another character playing her character. The scene gives her a chance to do something other than the hysterics that have been the character's trademark so far, and the result is both hilarious, but also technically impressive. (As expected, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, and Maggie Smith also shine. Meanwhile, as always, I found Ralph Fiennes a little hammy as Voldemort, although I admit larger-than-life villains like this are really hard to play without ham.)

If you haven't seen the film, go. If you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about.