Objectively, I’d rate ROTF the better-made of the two movies…I think a solid C for ROTF, but only C- for DOTM. DOTM struck me as having a lot of pacing problems and seemed very inconsistent in tone throughout, almost as though a couple of different directors and teams had worked on individual scenes, which then got slapped together in a hurry rather than carefully edited. ROTF was more preposterous, but uniformly so, and I thought it had a nice and lively, almost cheerful energy about it from start to finish. I got just as much entertainment value out of it as I got from the first movie and I never felt as though anything about ROTF needed changing—it was fine as it was. By contrast, there’s a lot about DOTM that I’d change, if I could. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first two movies, only bits and pieces of it.
My feelings about DOTM are probably best summed up by paraphrasing that old rhyme about the little girl who had the little curl, ie. when DOTM was good it was very, very good, but when it was bad, it was horrid.
