I was deeply, terribly excited for this movie.

I have enjoyed all the prior Harry Potter adaptations. While some of the earlier films had minor deviations from the books, I found most of the major plot points to be intact and had little objection to the story being left in the hands of WB Studios and their people.

However, after seeing HP and tHBP, I have to wonder: How was this film even allowed to be released?

Surely they could not have gotten Jo Rowling's blessing on this one, and surely the director/producers couldn't have felt, deep down in their hearts that they did a good job, or that this was an acceptable way to handle such highly anticipated and sensitive material. So many of my friends are so terribly happy and excited, and I can only think to myself: are we even watching the same movie?!

The story jumps right in from a point of no reference and clips along at a pace that, I felt, was uneven to say the least; alternating between painfully slow scenes packed with irrelevant information, and other painfully slow scenes that felt like they were meant to seem important, but because of their rushed nature, left me feeling like they were terribly contrived. And not in the good way!

This film touches on such a random mix of components from the book, and explains all of them so half-assedly that it leaves all of them feeling pointless and muddled. For instance, Fenrir Greyback makes several appearances on screen, but the scene in which he becomes important to the story is completely eliminated, thereby rendering his entire presence completely forgettable, and utterly disappointing!

Clearly, when considering the fact that almost no back story what-so-ever was included, we can assume that this movie was made for people who have read the books. However, with that in mind, I have a hard time understanding why such violent alterations to the original material needed to be made?

Not only did I feel that this movie underestimated the emotional maturity and intelligence of Harry Potter fans both young and old, but I feel like it was almost vaguely insulting. Did David Yates and Co. think that people would blindly accept the glaring lack of plot and be content to watch fluffy scenes of teen-age romance countered with baffling time jumps and poorly explained sequences that lacked so much of the material as to be rendered unrecognizable?

Just because they backed up the release date does not mean that I am going to blindly accept some completely unsatisfying bastardized version of one of my most favorite books in the series.

For me, what makes Harry Potter a good series of books is the heart breaking way Jo Rowling as a story teller can remind us how important it is to be chose to be truthful, and loyal, and brave and honest, and by illustrating what can happen in our lives and in the lives of others when we make those choices. Up to this point, I felt like the movies were doing a fair job of trying to encapsulate that same spirit, but I didn't feel like HBP movie contained any of those elements.

With so much rich reference material to draw on from the books, it seems as though it would be unnecessary to cut scenes that are crucial to the major story arcs in the final installment (ie: the memories of the gaunt family, and of Hepzibah and the goblet), while including random scenes that are totally out of sync with the characters and story that we, as fans, are familiar with (ie: DEs storming The Burrow on Christmas and burning it to the ground after terrorizing the Weasley family).

Granted, I understand that you can not fit all of the tiny details and nuances of a story such as this into a two hour film, but I think this would have been a much better, much more emotionally satisfying movie if they had focused on the relevance of the Horcruxes as the main story line, included the other memories (which are pivotal), along with the battle at Hogwarts at the end.

To me, this movie felt like I was watching bad AU fan-fiction on the big screen, acted by the WB cast. The entire second half of the movie was so grossly mishandled that I wasn't even sure I wanted to sit through the rest of it. Dumbledore's death was so vapid and emotionally disconnected that I didn't even care that he had died. And honestly, I would much rather have seen his funeral than to see him plummeting through the air to the ground below. This shot felt disrespectful, even comical, when it should have been ripping my heart out.

I really wanted Bonnie Watson to come out of her shell and light up the movie. However, and it saddens me to say this, she has proven to be a bland, un-vivacious Ginny, and I felt that the scenes developing the relationship between Harry and Ginny lacked any real chemistry. She is not a strong enough actress to support the weight of Ginny Weasley as a role, and I feel that her lacking performance brought down the whole tone of the film.

Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy was by far the most interesting thing in the movie, which is a shame, because as much as I love Draco as a character (he is my favorite to this day), and enjoy Tom Felton's rendition of him, it should not have been this way.

Am I the only one who felt insulted, cheated and hurt by the way this movie was rendered?