NY Mag’s Edelstein Raves Potter

The Harry Potter chatter continues to rise — here is David Edelstein at NY Magazine:

I didn’t, until the film started—and it was splendid! No, it’s not a larky kid-pic. We’re firmly in the realm of English horror, as one set of sallow Brits battles another even sallower. Our villains are racist murderers; our heroes embody tolerance, discipline, and a British public-school education, heavy on Latin—which, when chanted properly behind a wand, can mean the difference between goosing and defenestrating someone. As the aged Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) hears the chimes at midnight, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Ron’s newly sprouted kid sister, Ginny (Bonnie Wright), struggle to keep their desires (and vindictive hexes) in check while their objects of affection snog other people. If Voldemort (present in this movie only in spirit) were a true evil genius, he’d have abandoned the horcrux nonsense and used their own hormones against them.

He’s loving it, but he brings up one of the problems the series has had for a few films now: Hermione completely lost her identity:

Our three protagonists are taller, more polished, more charismatic—after all, they’re movie stars now. But Emma Watson’s Hermione has turned out disappointingly. It’s not Watson’s fault she grew up so pretty, so poised, with such luscious tresses. But someone ought to have reminded the filmmakers that in this boy-centric universe, Hermione is the nerdy-wonky cutie with whom all girls, hot and not, could identify. Now she’s just another cover girl. I found myself wishing for more of the washed-out blonde Evanna Lynch and her glassy singsong as the space case Luna Lovegood, the last female reminder that Harry Potter began as a universe of misfits.

The Hermione problem prevents the Potter movies, I think, from utterly pulling me in. She has seemed to me only as a support figure to Harry and a potential love interest. Say it ain’t so, not again. Here’s to hoping Edelstein is wrong.