Disc of the Week (11/8/11)

Harry Potter and the Canted Angles of Doom

The Harry Potter series is one of the most lucrative and popular franchises that popular culture has ever seen. It began as a few fantasy books written by J.K. Rowling, but soon it became a young adult sensation. You could not talk to anyone my age who didn’t know who the character of Harry Potter was, and the news that Hollywood was adapting the books into a film series was meant with much enthusiasm. We young’uns had seen the world of Harry Potter in our minds, but we were anxious to see how it would be interpreted by the medium of film. I was too young to worry that Hollywood would screw it up; I just wanted some awesome wizarding action.

That said, it’s a minor miracle that the filmmakers were able to maintain such a high level of quality over the course of eight long movies. They weren’t all perfect—most were quite imperfect—but it was always a blast to see these beloved characters make their way to the screen. The final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, marked the end of this decade-spanning journey. It isn’t the best Harry Potter film, but it gets many of the most important moments right. If you consider yourself a fan of the franchise, you’d best check it out. Just skip out as soon as the epilogue starts up, because it is just the worst. It’s slightly more tolerable than the fan fiction Rowling wrote in the Deathly Hallows book, but sheesh.

It should also be noted that the first season of Mike & Molly is finally getting its DVD release, though I’m convinced the sentence “Guys, I need the first season of Mike & Molly or my life isn’t complete” has been spoken by absolutely no one. But hey, Melissa McCarthy won an Emmy for this show, though it was likely more because Bridesmaids was awesome.