Harry Potter and the Terribly Lame Movie

Yeah, I know it's not my generation's thing, but I'm still entitled to opine...

Thanks to the oppressive heat, I saw my first Harry Potter movie on Friday night. Judging from the amount of money this franchise has generated, I must be the only person on the planet who has never read a single page of the books or seen any of the movies. All I knew about Harry Potter prior to this quest for air conditioned comfort was that he wore glasses and was some kind of magic dude. If you had asked me what Hogwarts was, I would have guessed that it was some kind of exotic STD.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will be the last of this franchise, and as far as this critic is concerned, that's just as well. Talk about a bunch of shallow, derivative crap! No wonder this generation of kids is so docile and lame. They didn't grow up with any sort of rebellious heroes, just this goody-goody schoolboy who flies around on a broom like some sissified version of the Wicked Witch of the West. (Broomsticks? Are you shitting me? Couldn't they have flown around in recliners or something halfway original? I mean, sheesh...) a "hero" with a bland personality consisting of no distinguishing characteristics beyond being "good" in some amorphous, non-introspective way.

He has a redheaded boy buddy and a skinny brunette girl buddy. Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, and Lois Lane much? Couldn't they have at least changed their hair color? And let's see, in one scene our heroes alight on a flying dragon... now where have I seen that before?

The bad guy is a total slacker. He has no ambition, no goals or plans for enslaving humanity or taking over the world's oil supply, or rendering Earth toxic to humans but delightful to a race of aliens. The only thing this guy seems to want is to get Harry Potter. It's incredibly stupid. Granted, not being up on my Harry Potter lore, maybe I missed something about how this guy got such a stick up his butt about the boy wizard. Even so, I would have thought that killing Harry would be a means to some greater end... but if that is the case, the villain's motivation is unclear based on seeing only this film.

Anyway, there's this whole "Luke, I am your father!" light sabre fight to the death thing in the movie... sooooo derivative!

In the end there is an object that confers great power which Harry destroys very easily once he gets his hands on it. If Bilbo Baggins had had it that easy, the world would have missed out on some truly great fantasy literature. Here Harry Potter is with the ability to rule the world, and he just tosses it into the chasm without a second thought. This boy is incorruptible... and incredibly boring.

The special effects were cool, and the air conditioning was sublime. Other than that, I hated this film. It did provide some insight into why this generation of ~20-year-olds is so incredibly lame, though. They don't have ass-kickin' rock stars to corrupt them. They don't have bad-boy outcast heroes like Jeff Spicoli or James Dean or Huckleberry Finn. They have this nutless wonder goody-two-shoes magic wizard boy who is just... good.

I'm going to read the books to try and gain some insight into how the generation with the most to rebel against (wars, loss of civil liberties, global warming, the crappy economy and ripoff higher education game, the utter lameness of popular music, etc.) could have ended up being the least rebellious generation in history. I blame you, Harry Potter! Religion is the opiate of the masses. Harry Potter is more like the lobotomy.