Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows

Last night I drove in to San Francisco to pick up Alan from work and then go to The Metreon to watch HP7b on their IMAX screen in  3D. When we arrived we were told that the IMAX screen was broken but that we could still watch it in 3D on an EXT (?) screen that was larger than a regular movie screen and had better sound. It was still in 3D so the guy working guest relations told us we'd get the same experience. The movie was 30 minutes later than the one we had tickets for so we sat in line for a *long* time. I was really disappointed when we entered the "special theater just for that screen" because it didn't look much larger than a regular old movie screen. With the amount of time we waited we could have driven back to Oakland and gone to the fake IMAX (it's real IMAX but the screen isn't that super huge one; it's just regular huge) in Emeryville and been closer to home.

I was in a super bad mood because in addition to the bait & switch (while technically their fault, not really their fault), the people that were in line next to us for over an hour were so obnoxious. It was a Danish mom and her four kids. The middle boy - I'm guessing 14 or 15 maybe - had tremendous issues with personal space. As in, he kept touching me. While sitting on the ground playing with my iPhone he put his nasty dirty bare feet on me no less than five times. Confession: I hate feet. Really, really, really hate feet. I get all sorts of skeeved out when Alan tries to put his feet on me. HATE FEET. So yeah, you can imagine how thrilled I was with sitting next to him for an hour. I kept giving him dirty looks but he didn't seem to care. Finally his mom sat between him and me but even she kept touching me and leaning against me. At one point they brought a bunch of extra large sodas over and because they couldn't sit still if I gave them $100, they knocked one over and it spilled all over the rug. Then they had even less space in which they could fill so they invaded my personal space a bit more. When we got in the theater guess who they sat by? Yup. It's true.

The guy on the other side of me kept shoveling popcorn in his mouth like a Hoover, and then slapping his hands together to get rid of all of the salt (I presume). Except he was doing it not over his own lap but off to the side of him so I was getting all his crumbs and salt. I "accidentally" elbowed him once and it stopped, but then throughout the entirety of the movie he kept farting. It stunk soooo bad. All in all, I was pretty miserable.

But the movie itself? Lovely. Wonderful. Beautiful. Touching. Endearing. Everything I could have hoped for and moreThis was the perfect ending to the series.

Several times I laughed out loud. And several times I was full on sobbing. Even the farting man next to me had to wipe a tear away at one point.

BUT ... it wasn't necessary to see it in 3D. Unlike Avatar where I was astounded by the special effects and the 3D experience here it felt half-way done. I kept waiting to be blown away by something and it never came. There is only one scene where I had even a flicker of the reaction that I had while watching Avatar. I think I want to go back and see it on Emeryville's IMAX screen without the 3D treatment just for comparison's sake.

In the meantime, if you're at all a fan of Harry Potter I recommend you get to the theater as fast as you can.