At last, I watched the last Harry Potter movie. Actually, even if they were released as two separate parts, I watched both for the first time one after the other.
I'll already state the obvious: The pacing of the first part was too slow, and the second part too fast. I can understand the studio's reluctance at releasing a single 220-minutes movie, but in effect by splitting it the director ended up stretching the first part and condensing the second one. I didn't mind the pacing of the first part too much though. Apart from a few scenes that lingered on, the first part was the first time in the series where it took time building up character development rather than rushing through things. I can understand that the books were getting longer and longer, so with an average running time of 140 minutes the scripts felt shorter and shorter, yet it felt nice to have a few lengthy scenes where the main characters just talked. Actually, that really gave us a chance to see the main actors be good at acting rather than just doing stuff.
Being directed by the same director as movies 5 and 6, David Yates, it satisfyingly kept the same ambiance and art direction. During certain scenes, especially some battle scenes in the second part, it was just plain too dark to see much, even if it was just CGI. Once brightness was adjusted, the CGI was pretty good and effective.
The story itself had some important plot points that I assume were from the book and were, well, making me uncomfortable. The whole wedding thing simply didn't work for me, a few deaths were either languishing on unimportant characters or barely mentioned for important ones, and there's a surrealist scene (in all white to contrast the darkness of the whole series, I guess) that made less sense to me than 2001: A Space Odyssey. And as the whole thing falls into a war reminiscent of Britain's role in WWII, I was still bothered that this was a school with children. Well, it had to end with a bang, and a bang it is. But this is clearly not a book or movie for children anymore.
What I'm essentially trying to say is that if you've ended up watching the rest of the series, you won't be let down with this last movie, but it isn't an Earth-shattering masterpiece either.