Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1: Critic Reviews

Part 1 is the most cinematically rewarding chapter yet.

Even though it ends in the middle, Deathly Hallows: Part 1 finds notes of anxious suspense and grave emotion to send its characters, and its fans, into the last round.

It's hard to mourn the demise of a franchise that was never more than half-alive to begin with.

Menacing and meditative, Hallows is arguably the best installment of the planned eight-film franchise, though audiences who haven't kept up with previous chapters will be hopelessly lost.

It's half of a really good movie, full of the enchantment, emotion and incident for which the Potter series has become so fanatically cherished.

Like Alfonso Cuaron, who made Azkaban, Yates and his crew are as visually descriptive as Rowling was with language.

Watson's brainy, practical Hermione drives the film's narrative; Grint's fiery, jealous Ron provides its relatable (that is, non-magical) conflict.

Equal parts action thriller, political parable, and multidimensional love story, Hallows feels sad and strong and true.

Every two minutes the action whooshes sideways to someone somewhere else.

This one is a long, archetypal journey that screeches to a halt a few stops short of its destination.

David Yates' fluid, fast-paced direction sends up the crackling tension of a thriller.

By any measure, Deathly Hallows is a ripping thriller.

The filmmakers...adapt Rowling's tale with as much fidelity as their budget, effects crew, production designers, actors, and common sense will allow.

Hallows's first hour is deadly, all right.

The trouble with Harry, as becomes clear from this seventh and penultimate installment, is not that we have lost the plot -- the film is as tangled and as corkscrewed as Bonham Carter's hair -- but that we are in danger of losing everything else.

The film depends more on mood and character than many of the others, and key actions seem to be alarmingly taking place off-screen.

The story-within-the-story regarding the deathly hallows is visualized by way of shadow-puppet style animation, and the effect is quite beautiful.

The seventh and penultimate entry in the franchise jettisons the humor and fizz of the earlier movies for a much bleaker adult tone.

When Warner Brothers announced that it planned to split the seventh, and final, installment of J.K. Rowling's wizarding septology into two separate films, I figured it was all about the money. Turns out it was all about the story.

Radcliffe, Watson and Grint, having literally grown up in their characters, are ready for their close-up. They earned it, they deserve it and they nailed it.

There's plenty of humor, plenty of magic and even a bit of romantic stress, although there's also quite a bit of mulling and standing about.

It's not a bad movie, but it is very much a transitional one, with Warner Bros. splitting J.K. Rowling's last installment in the "Potter" series into two films.

Lumbering and gripping by turns, and suffused with a profound sense of solitude and loss.

Beautifully shot but a soulless cash machine, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" delivers no dramatic payoff, no resolution and not much fun.

Alternately funny and touching, it's the best film in the series, an "Empire Strikes Back" for these wizards and their wizarding world. And those effects? They're so special you don't notice them.