With only three days of sales for week ending 11/13/11, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 apparated on top of both the Blu-ray and the overall sales charts.

He makes this a character focused movie, it’s about the three young leads, and it’s about Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, it’s about understanding who these characters are and how they fit into the story. It can be a bleak and cold character drama at times, but it still has its lighter moments, and charming interludes of comedy and brightness, although far fewer than before. At Hogwarts, Harry learns that there are still good wizards in the world, like his new friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley and the rest of the students of house Gryffindor, and there are some not so good, such as his soon to be rival Draco Malfoy of house Slytherin. It’s not just the cool bits that fans would complain about, wondering why there wasn’t more Firenze, or where all the Quidditch was, it was interesting background details of the characters, particularly Dumbledore’s past in the final film, that couldn’t make it on screen, for lack of time or pacing issues. It also means that you can devote nearly an hour to the film’s conclusion, and it doesn’t feel imbalanced.

There’s little to fault here, with clear and audible dialogue, vivid and effective action sequences making excellent use of the surround soundstage (the letters flying around the Dursleys on Sunday are an impressive sound), and John Williams providing a memorable and appropriate score for the first film that will grow and be built upon in the subsequent films. There’s a lot less in the way of colour, although scenes like the World Cup and the Yule Ball do impress. After all, there’s really just the one major plot in the film, that of the escape of Sirius Black, the targeting of Harry Potter, and the revelations of how Sirius Black was involved in Harry’s past.

Plus, a complimentary commemorative Limited Edition Remembrall enamel pin from the Harry Potter Fan Club Pin Seeking collection.

If you’ve read the book, and know the backgrounds to the characters, the reason why things happen in the story, then you’ll enjoy the film a lot more. Of course I’ll begin by re-evaluating The Philosopher’s Stone, thirteen years after I first reviewed the DVD for this site. They’re no longer child actors, but actors full stop, and deliver consistent, strong, and effective performances, really conveying the emotional content of a scene. The CG effects are quite good, although the underwater sequences are stricken more than you might expect with uncanny valley syndrome. When Harry Potter learns on his eleventh birthday that he is, in fact, a wizard, he is quickly swept up into the spellbinding world of Hogwarts School of Whitchcraft and Wizardry alongside new best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.