Starting off Daniel Radcliff is really short. I'm anti twilight and this franchise is going down the same path, coupled with the fact that Rowling went mills and boony on the last two books this movie is really disappointing. Its quite clichéd with excruciatingly bad acting by Daniel Radcliff (December boys flashback) and Emma Watsons needs to go in for augmentation mammoplasty if she needs to hold at least fractional audience attention.

on the contrary, Rupert Grint was amazing seeing him last in the wild target with Nighy(who was wasted BTW) he bought Ron's nervous energy with the inherent darkness as mentioned in the book onto the screen with great talent though the poor guy had to leave mid way cause of the plot. Fiennes is just brilliant, his presence on the screen is all enveloping and you identify with the dread that the characters feel (and why they don't say his name) acutely. Voldemort is brought alive with great panache and brilliance.

there were some other performances of note such as David O'Hara was bemusing as the harry in the ministry, Umbridge felt vile and proper as always, Bellatrix was excellent, Weasly twins were mischievous bringing a smile to your face with just their presence and Evanna lynch was her loony self as Luna but on the other hand her father played by Ifans was terribly done and forced.

Suffice to say the young women in the potter universe leave a lot to be desired. Hermione is played with the same grotesque way I would associate with Bella in twilight. The fact that they both look and dress similar doesn't help matters much. Watson needs to come out of her shell and show whats she's truly capable of because there is a budding actress in her who needs to shine through soon or be relegated to be another flash in the pan story. Ginny Weasly is in one word ugly. True they didn't know when the cast her that she will become a future love interest but still for god sake get her some speech lessons at least. Of course she needed to come down to the kitchen to get her dress zipped because she's so inept. Poesy who plays Delacour is as flat chested and androgynous as the rest of them and one wonders why she is a French star at all because her acting is artificial to say the least.

Daniel Radcliff should jump off a cliff. Being the son of the casting agent can only get u only so far. U got to have talent and screen presence to go the distance. He is shorter than Emma Watson so come on. yes harry potter of the books is thin and sickly but cinematic interpretations demand a certain figure for the audience to not be disgusted with this pint of a fellow just bellowing on about how he is going to get Voldemort who's a truly colossal personality in the film. The funny thing is that u feel like siding with Voldemort in the films unlike the book just to shut Daniel up. Less said about his dialogue delivery the better. U feel he's trying to overcome a stutter and has been advised by a speech doctor to lisp and be expressionless while talking.

The special effects are basic with not much to write about except the Horcrux sequence. Every effort to save money on effects has been made. U see people come into frame only after the have apparated not once but multiple times. It's like watching a movie from the eighties where they switched to a shadow on the wall to show u what's happening. The story about the three brothers is completely animated, one can only assume to save production costs again though the animated sequence is brilliant and deserves full accolades. I was actually wishing that the movie was animated like that as well. Would've made for an excellent watch.

All in all it was the brilliant writing, albeit a little weepy, by Rowling which saved the day for this movie. her subplots, underlying concepts of good versus evil, subtle humour along with the mythology and pure magic of the books, pun intended, is what we are fans of. Unfortunately it is being murdered while being transferred onto the screen. This is how Ayn rand must have felt when fountainhead the movie came out. I wish they would take inspiration from the millennium series and come up with something actually worth audience's money instead of swindling them. You see poorly imagined sequences so that they barely bring alive what is written in the book. I want the illusion of inception, action of matrix and darkness of Schindlers list when I go to see these movies because the books are capable of that, clearly the director isn't.