User blog comment:Kacieh/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 1 Review Page/@comment-105568-20101122051450

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was a well constructed and entertaining film. I feel that we saw the best performances of the actors in their respective roles to date, as if everyone has finally come into their own in the HP series. The directing, as usual for David Yates, was exceptionally brilliant, and the script, as usual for Steve Kloves, was a fantastic adaptation of Rowling's work.

I was, however, wary walking into this film. From what I had recalled from the book, the first half of Deathly Hallows was essentially one big camping trip; and with all this talk about extending the film into two parts, not to mention being a closer adaptation of its source material than previous films, I was dreading that Yates and Kloves dragging this movie out into a two and a half hour campout. "Watch out guys," I said to my accompanying friends who had not read the books, "There is a lot of camping in this. Like, a lot of camping."

"Camping?" they replied, "What do you mean, camping?"

Oh, they would find out soon enough, I thought.

Fortunately, Yates and Kloves are far more skilled movie makers than I had cynically expected. They were able to successfully take a book that had a lot of downtime and some particularly slow moments, and adapt it into a well-paced adventure film without losing the nuance and characterizations found in the book. Like many fans, I was disappointed to see some elements glossed over and other scenes dropped entirely. This, however, is welcome considering the alternative: more camping.

After the film was over, one of my friends looked over at me and said, "My God, I can't believe it. I thought you were joking.  All that camping."

"No, my friend," I said to him, "This film had 40-50% less camping than the book."

And it's all the better for it.