Hey-heh, just joking with that headline.

But as I just got out of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I," I do have to say that this is the first adult offering from the blockbuster series. Or mature young adult, anyway.

Little about the film is cutesy. For the first time we aren't hobbled by the traditional return to Hogwarts, games of quidditch, the silly romantic quibbles between budding adolescents, the guessing game of which teacher this time is the villain (hint: isn't it always the new one?).

No, Hogwarts is missing because Dumbledore is dead, and quidditch is absent for the same reason (though there is a snitch). Same for the new teacher. And the romantic quibbles between Hermoine and Ron seem more like middle-age squabbles (imagine: the pair have gone from googly eyes to dissatisfaction, all without ever having had sex).

The film feels a bit long, and like the middle sections of the "Star Wars" trilogies, it has no real ending. Just an elongated sequence that hints of what's to come.

And it is dark, both literally and thematically. I found myself wishing for the entire film that somebody would have turned on the back lighting (or that cute little toy that Dumbledore left for Ron). Then, too, I was glad that my granddaughter, at 28 months, is far too young to take to a film that has about as much humor as, say, "Saw 3-D."

I wish, too, that the film had come equipped with subtitles. I don't know whether it was the sound in the theater (I was watching in the new Frank Theatres Queensgate 13 complex in York, Pa.) or the kids slurring their English-accented words, but I had problems understanding what they were saying.

But I'm not sure it mattered. After having seen the previous films, I know what's going on generally, even though I can't answer questions about anything specific. Still, I enjoy the interplay between the characters, the film does have some genuine moments of emotion, including a couple of deaths and a couple more near-fatalities, and I'm pretty sure that good is going to win out over eeee-villlllle.

Finally, for a film that is basically a set-up, it does take us to some pretty decent locations (some of those pretty landscapes were in Wales and northern England). So ... while "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" may not be the "film event of this generation," it may be the best of what this series has to offer.

It'll be nice to see just how Rowling ends things. Too bad we have to wait until July.

Bummer, eh?

Below: Scenes from "The Deathly Hallows."