We're six films into this thing and I'm still wondering who is going to have an actual character arc other than Harry and maybe Snape.  I've seen all of the Potter films and while I've never loved any of them or felt the need to revisit any of them, I've always been happy to see what happens next.  My favorite is not the movie-snob choice of the Alfonso Cuaron-directed third film--it's the one with the Wizard tournament where the world of magic expanded just enough to make the series seem fresh.  With Half Blood Prince, I was for the first time really bored and really hoping that we'd just skip to the final showdown with Voldemort.

I imagine that all of this works better in the books.  You can spend days reading about the teenage love lives and classroom antics of the series' young heroes, but in movie form, things need to move a little more quickly.  I don't want non-stop action or a dumbed-down spectacle with no character development, but this latest installment was kind of the worst of both worlds.  Not only was it pretty short on the action and magic, it also spent a lot of time on character beats that didn't really build character.  After all, what did we see any of the characters really do in this film?

Harry's buddies are still fumbling towards a relationship, something that's been brewing for the last three films but that never develops enough to be really meaningful.  Ron's brothers are cute, but they get one scene that just says "hey, we're still in this thing!"  The kooky Luna girl is often funny, but she's otherwise just completely useless in the story.  Haggrid has nothing to do, all of the cool people from other schools are now gone, we see five minutes of some of the adult wizards and they don't change anything, and Dumbledore continues to prod Harry with warnings about how grave the times are going to be.  It all just got a little tedious.  I was happy to see angsty, rebellious Harry in a previous movie, and I think Snape has been the guy with the most potential in the films, but the movies aren't about him.

I'm kind of done with all this.  I want to see how it ends and I think the last 30-40 minutes of this film set up the finale quite nicely, but getting there was a chore.  I know that the plan is to make the last book into two movies--I hope that works and that they can include some actual character moments by giving the story some room to breathe.  I hope it's not just four interminable hours leading up to a giant CGI Wizard fight.