This is the most challenging review that this site has had to deal with to date, as the latest instalment in the Suburban Commando series seems to have taken a massive shift away from the source material.
Suburban Commando 3: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.2 is not only a confusing, wordy and over-numerical title but it is also very misleading. Lets break the title down into its composite parts:
1) Suburban – There is little to no suburbia featured in this movie at all. There is countryside abound and lovely castles such as the marvellous Hogwarts…
Sure the place is on fire and you do get fires in suburbia, but just because something is on fire does not mean that it is suburban.
…and there is a little bit of city…
You might be forgiven for thinking this is a little corner of suburbia with its broken trolley smashed into a wall but its not its Kings Cross, one of the most famous train stations in London
…but a complete lack of the magical bit that goes in between these two areas…
Hey Rowling, this is what suburbia looks like brother! Bald, middle aged men just working on their 24″ pythons on the lawn. With good reason too, you never know when The Undertaker might show up in a cameo.
…Suburbia!
2) Commando – again, there were lots and lots of things in this movie; wizards, death eaters, goblins, ginger kids to name a few but nothing which was explicitly named as a commando. There were lots of fights taking place on varying scales, ranging from two guys hugging…
Love that dare not speak its name combined with he who can’t be named, led to a joint suicide pact due to a lack of communication
…to quite a few folk banging heads…
Note the guy in the foreground. He is the most likely to be a commando but he’s not even in the movie!
(Also note in this photo, Dr Zachary Smith from Lost in Space is now doing camera work for the Harry Potter team)
Dr. Smith, in the glory days of Lost in Space before the work dried up
… but in all those flights not one commando is to be seen, which frankly sullies the whole movie for most people’s tastes. Its a very simple formula for the director to follow “Commando in the title, Commando in the movie” – words to live by.
“Hold it! The next man makes a move, the commando gets it”
3) Harry Potter – There’s an abundance of the Potter boy in this movie, so Harry Potter fans who were previously annoyed by the lack of Suburbia and Commandos should be kept happy by this. Its also nice that we get to watch Harry age over the course of the movies
Harry Potter in The Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter in Suburban Commando 3: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt2
So, halfway through the title we’re 2 for 4 on appropriate words, lets continue…
4) and the – I will ignore these as they are a co-ordinating conjunction and a determiner (respectively) and are really only there to help the title sound less “bullet-pointed”. They do a fine job of this and as such should not be ignored and receive an honourable mention. They are also used extensively in the actual film itself and so grammar fans should be kept happy by this.
5) Deathly Hallows – Now, after not having seen any of the previous Harry Potter movies I’ll be the first to put my hands up and say, “I think I’ve soiled myself”. Once that mess is cleaned up, we address the problem of not knowing what a Deathly Hallow actually looks like. The title suggests a multiple of them by the “-s” at the end of the word Hallows, so hopefully I should have plenty of chance to spot one. You wait here while I go back and look………..
…………………………………….
……………………………………………
<still no wiser, looks up Harry Potter Wikia>
The Deathly Hallows are three highly powerful magical objects supposedly created by Death and given to each of three brothers in the Peverell family. They consisted of the Elder Wand, an immensely powerful wand that was considered undefeatable; the Resurrection Stone, a stone which could summon the spirits of the dead, and the Cloak of Invisibility, which, as its name suggests, renders the user completely invisible. (Harry Potter Wikia)
So there we have it, a wand, a stone and a cloak, all of which do appear in the film (albeit the cloak of invisibility is not seen due to its special power, but you get the feeling its there). I also admit to falling asleep in the film and when I woke up, Harry was chucking what looked like a Dungeons and Dragons dice on the floor of the forest and I really have no idea why but he called it the reserection stone and so we can be satisfied that it is definitely there in the film, no matter how confused we may be about its purpose or what he is doing with it. With a name like resurrection stone, you’d think that would be something worth holding on to, especially with all the fighting that he gets into. That’s teenagers for you these days, they don’t really care for their stuff and just expect the parents to buy them a new resurrection i-pod like they grow on bloody trees. Harry’s thing was made by Death himself and I can’t imagine they are easy come by, the ungrateful bastard.
Shortly after this scene, Gandalf makes a cameo appearance and has a lengthy dialogue scene with Harry which even Harry himself questions the reality of. To reassure him and show my delight, I shouted out, “Yes Harry, yes! I can see him too!” This was an absolute treat for me, after having seen him in Suburban Commando Origins: The Lord of the Rings. They really have pulled out all the stops with this final Harry Potter film by tying in not only Suburban Commando (although the audience has been short-changed on both suburbia and commandos) but characters from the Origin story as well, which was a really nice touch and a nod towards the long term fans of the franchise.
The wand also makes an appearance or two throughout the film and without giving anything away, the movie climaxes when Harry defeats Voldemort with it and then not only does he throw it away into a ravine but he snaps it in two first! Perhaps Death has an eBay shop where he just knocks out these Deathly Hallows and sells them from Hong Kong for a penny and £7.99 p&p but I very much doubt it. What kind of message is this film sending to the young children of today? Soon enough our streets will be littered with broken Elder Wands and Resurrection Stones and the elderly will be slipping on them when they nip out to the shops.
They have a nice touch at the end, where they go 19 years into the future to see how they all end up. It shows them all grown up and married with kids of their own, who they are sending off to Hogwarts to start their wizardly/commando studies. This scene features a lovely cameo from Rock Moranis, who we haven’t really seen on our screens since the final instalment of dead horse flogged franchise, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves in 1997 and frankly, I’m sure he could do with the money.
Honey, I’ve Shrunk my Bank Account
All in all this is not a bad film with some very nice touches, although I think they bought into the Suburban Commando franchise in name only in order to get some publicity for their film as, and I don’t mind repeating this, there is very little actual Suburbia or Commandos. So please, do not go to the cinema expecting a great amount of either, remember this is a sequel and they are never quite as good as the original but on its own merits, its definitely worth watching.
Ratings
Suburbia: 3
Commandos: 0
Cameos by The Undertaker: 0
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