Harry Potter kissing a girl? Mmm yes and a rather hyped up snog at that, one which actually had people clapping at the premiere I went to….madness
But, yes, here is the film where Potter gets some serious romance, with fellow Hogwarts scholar Cho Chang, played by Katie Leung - though bafflingly, and rather ungallantly, her character is completely dumped from the action after the snog, and she doesn't even get to be one of his gang of pals who finally confront the lord of all evil in the final reel. His description of the kiss is incidentally the best dialogue exchange in the film. "What was it like?" ask his friends Ron and Hermione. "Wet," replies Harry unselfconsciously, and adding after a nicely judged pause: "She'd been crying."
Bafta-winning British director David Yates takes over the reins here, and once again the emphasis on that most over-rated and under-understood concept: dark. Harry Potter has once again gone dark, and what this means is an exciting and moody opening sequence in which Harry confronts some bullies and then, against all the rules, uses his secret magic powers in front of civilians, or "muggles", to slay some fierce beasts - Dementors.
The best or should I say worst addition to the HP lineup is newcomer Imelda Staunton is marvellous and genuinely unpleasant as Professor Dolores Umbridge, the creepy new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. She is a cross between the Queen and a Nazi prison camp leader. Professor Umbridge has been forced on the school by the paranoid Minister of the Ministry of Magic, with a brief to sort things out. She instigates a reign of terror that takes up by far too much of the movie. However there is a superb scene in which she makes Harry do lines - a magnificently retrograde imposition - with a special quill. He has to write out the unjust sentiment: "I must not tell lies", a phrase that is magically and agonizingly scratched out in blood on the back of his hand. It's absurd but also very, very nasty: a painfully real case of schoolteacherly bullying. Harry then winds up forming an alternative rebel gang of students who must go it alone to take on the evil forces. Teenager rebellion exists at Hogwarts in some shape or form throughout the movies.
And so the Harry Potter saga continues. It's essentially deeply conservative, with battles, and crashes, and giants and explosions and is shaping up to be an extraordinary real-time experiment for Daniel Radcliffe. Plenty of young actors complain that they did their growing up in public. For Radcliffe that is literally true. When the saga is finally complete, its sheer bulk will be impressive, and we will gasp at Radcliffe's remarkable stamina and maturity in the role: a testing experience for any actor, but one that he has managed without going obviously mad.
But the question is, will the HP phenomenon amount to anything more than just very good family entertainment - or will it assume a lofty Tolkien-like stateliness? I think not. Whereas in Lord of the Rings, there is growth and development of the film art or acting, the are worrying signs that there is really no development from film to film: the actors are all obviously growing up, but there is no substantial increase in maturity in the films themselves, no desire to develop and grow the good and evil storylines that come across so easily in the books.
Every time I sit down to a new Harry Potter movie, I'm struck by how the feel and look of it is a doppelganger to the previous one - and how forgettable, even disposable, the plot twists are.
There is a need to see the maturity of the movies will catch up with the books to leave society with an epic film journey that will be remembered by kids of the next generation rather than a chain of commercialized films out to break the World Record on sales and marketing. Although, it could also be said that this film is a jump start for the last two installments – the seed has been sown…
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