About a month and a half ago, my boyfriend (Tommy) and I decided to start watching all of the Harry Potter movies. He’d only seen the first 3 — and not for years — and I rest firmly in the “much-prefer-the-books-but-can-enjoy-the-movies” camp. Except for movies 4–7. But we won’t unpack that right no- THE BURROW NEVER BURNS DOWN OK — okay my apologies. Moving on.
Anyway, we decided to dive in, this time together. And we were PUMPED. We’d text throughout the day leading up to our viewings. We’d go out of our way to secure the perfect snacks. We’d grab coffee to make sure we could stay awake for the whole movie. We’d link his laptop to his bluetooth speaker for a premium sonic experience. Every element of this activity was perfectly planned.
What we didn’t plan? The color commentary. And the commentary from Tommy was certainly colorful. Turns out, it only took about 10 minutes into the first movie for him to get hooked. And immediately, he had thoughts — he had a lot of thoughts. Dumbledore? “A total G.” Malfoy? “NARC. such a narc.” The Dursleys? “Ugghhhhhhh.”
The takes kept coming and the volume never ceased — from “The Sorcerer’s Stone” to “The Half Blood Prince” — so on movie #2, I started live-tweeting. It started off as a joke, but after movie #3 Tommy made his own Twitter account to follow along, so I kept it up.
So now, I present to you a movie by movie breakdown of “Maggie’s Perspective of Tommy’s Experience Watching 6 out of 8 Harry Potter Movies in Six-ish Weeks.”
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
I didn’t tweet during this one. Sorry. Genius didn’t strike until the second movie.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Here we go.
He was quite taken with Neville:
And utterly unimpressed by the elder Malfoy:
Aaaaaaand then I fell asleep after this part. Moving on!
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
When things really started to take off.
Things got speculative and deeeeep:
He did tell me later on that the end of the movie was “crazy.” We also determined that either I have narcolepsy or we just need to start these movies way earlier.
Harry Potter and the “Chalice of Fuego”
We viewed this over two nights because…surprise, I was tired.
We paused here because I couldn’t stop laughing. Then:
The next day:
After work, we settled in for the rest of the movie.
And quickly hit a roadblock:
We resumed our viewing. But this time, the comments were sparse.
His confusion then got the best of him:
And then things became clear.
And then it ended.
Aren’t we all, Tommy. Aren’t we all.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
This is the movie where I start to hate the movies, so I’ve only seen it a few times, don’t remember the weird plot, and was really confused the whole time. But this isn’t about me, so here we go.
He didn’t really say anything for the first 25 minutes. He was too busy trying to follow. And then, a glimmer of life:
Then:
Yes, they do.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Also viewed over two nights. This movie is long.
We then resumed.
A moment of reflection:
Followed by facing the facts:
The NEXT NIGHT!
Because HP6 moves so quickly, we spent most of it trying to keep up. There was quite a lot to process. And, in the end…there was one thing *someone* refused to process:
(We will now both be taking some time to recover from HP6, and will watch HP7 (parts I and II) when we feel less fragile. Updates to come.)
So there you have it. An unvarnished and mildly disjointed account of one man’s experience watching Harry Potter, and his girlfriend’s attempt to document it. A gripping tale of joy and sorrow, discovery and loss. A journey that brought us firebirds and candelabra(s?) along with Bobaloo and the Romanians.
Oh, and by the way — Tommy still doesn’t believe Dumbledore’s dead.
