View From the Phlipside - Harry Potter

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

I don’t do a lot of “reviews” on this program.  There’s just too many movies and TV shows and too many other things to talk about.  But the furor that has cropped up around the newest Harry Potter movie has caught my attention.

Let’s get something straight right up front.  I know not everyone is a fan of Harry Potter.  Some folks have their religious sensibilities offended.  Some folks have their literary sensibilities offended.  All well and good.  If you don’t like the story then don’t read the books or see the movie.  The folks that are annoying me seem to be from a new category.  They don’t have anything against the basic story line at all but they are all up in arms about the newest movie.  It’s interesting to note that some of the most respected names in the movie critic world appear to be among them.

The complaint is that the latest movie “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1” isn’t a classic, complete movie.  In other words the basic story line doesn’t come to a nice clean ending.  Every time I hear that complaint I just shake my head.  Folks the movie says, right in the title, that this is only part, Part 1, of a longer story.  So apparently the screenwriter was supposed to create some kind of artificial ending to make the movie purists happy.  The movie ends at a perfectly logical point in the story with a nice cliff hanger.  I find the complaints about the movie to be elitist snobbery.

There is another group of critics that amaze me.  These are folks who either haven’t read the books or seen the previous movies and then complain that they don’t understand what’s going on.  Well duh.  I’m not sure if this scores higher on the arrogance scale or the stupidity scale.  There have been just over 900 minutes of on screen story telling before you reach this movie, the 7th in a series of 8.  You haven’t done your homework as it were but want all of us to stop and catch you up.  I don’t think so.  If you don’t have the background the story there is a way to figure out what’s going on.  Go with someone who has seen all the movies and then ask them questions every time you can’t figure out what’s going on.

That’ll work fine right up to the point when the usher throws you out.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010