Lily is Albus' grandma, not Scorpius'. How can we be expected to take a negative review seriously if the reviewer doesn't pay attention to such an important detail?
^ By examining the other points and determining if the criticisms are valid?
In many cases, you read a review before deciding to read/see the work in question yourself (although it can be after doing so, for the pleasure of reading and commenting with your favorite reviewer). A negative review is meant to discourage you from doing so. Saying something like the grandma comment while mocking the story with a lot of seeming hyperbole doesn't bode well for her having paid serious enough attention that we should take her opinion of the script as valid instead of reading it.
Except this review spoils critical plot points, so I assume it operates under the assumption that the reader has already finished the script. Like, sure, it was a genuine fuck-up on the reviewer\'s part, but that doesn\'t automatically render any of their other potentially legitimate (if slightly exaggerated) points suddenly moot and not worth discussing anymore.
It could have been just a simple mistake - a typo, basically. People do it all the time.
Oh God! Natural light!
Yeah, that was just a typo. Sorry.
I've got Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash, Spyro, and Paper Mario fanfics.
I see reviews talk openly about major plot points a lot, especially if they are supposed to substitute for/spare you from actually reading the script. My problem with the grandma comment was that it made the reviewer seemed hurried and more focused on mocking on the script than writing a good review. Obviously, she knows whose grandma Lily is.
My own opinion after thinking about it for several weeks is that it's basically a good story but too contrived on various points to be canon.
I agree with this review. At first I was excited, but with all of the horrible plot holes and poorly written plot lines and characterizations, I\'m severely disappointed. Why is this even considered canon? JK Rowling had little to do with it. With this logic, anyone\'s poorly written fanfic should become canon! Every time I go to any Harry Potter and see this play referenced as canon I roll my eyes.
Thank goodness, someone else who realizes what a piss-poor, bad fanfiction this thing actually is! As soon as I read about the whole \"Albus Severus in Slytherin\" and \"befriends Scorpio\" I just said, Oh, look! Horrible fanfiction written by a 12-year-old who has no idea about what the series was actually about, but wants to prove how \'edgy\' and \'dark\' they are, by basically taking Harry Jr and doing the typical \"What if Harry HAD been in Slytherin?\" idea.
Then again, I never saw the need for a continuation of Harry Potter to begin with. Whether you do or don\'t consider the 19 Years Later epilogue, the series did not leave any questions open that needed to be answered. Everything that had to be known was known and explained. I\'d call this a cash grab, but I don\'t know if that would be praising it...
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Harry Potter and the Patronizing Fanfiction
(Note that this is a review of the published script released on July 31 and not of the stage play.)
This script was poorly-written garbage full of plot holes and Pandering to the Base. The story is nothing but fanfic cliches. "Harry's son is sorted into Slytherin and gets bullied and goes all angsty and befriends Draco's son and then he steals a time-turner to prove himself by saving Cedric back in book 4, and then you'll never guess what happens! You'll never guess! Oh yeah, and also Voldemort and Bellatrix have a daughter with silvery hair and fishnets who acts perky and bubbly before revealing herself to be a totally 100% eeeeeeeviiiiiiil villain with absolutely no character depth whatsoever.
Even more insulting is the shameless pandering of briefly reviving Snape with time travel purely so everyone can reiterate what a great person he was, as if book 7 hadn't hammered that in already. Yeah, we totally need more screentime for Snape while characters like Hagrid are barely even in this play. Oh yeah, and in case you were wondering where Lupin and Tonks's son is, he's not in this play because he wasn't in the movie version and therefore the audience wouldn't know who he is, obviously.
The only decent part was Scorpius Malfoy, who was basically a well-written character trapped in a shitty fanfic (His name's still stupid, though). Just don't expect him to hook up with Albus despite the dripping subtext, though, since a scene is included to make it absolutely clear that he's totally into Rose despite barely interacting with her at all.
I did have a good time reading this script, but only because I was laughing my pants off at the So Bad, It's Good stuff like the time-travel plot, the trolley lady being badass, the audacity of Scorpius time traveling to when Snape was alive and running up to him and yelling, "I KNOW YOU WERE IN LOVE WITH MY GRANDMA!", and, of course, the entire concept of "ruining Voldemort Day."
But then there had to go and be some needlessly creepy parts, too, like Albus polyjuicing himself into Ron and then making out with Hermione. Scorpius considers giving him a high-five for it. Hermione's molested by her own nephew-in-law, and it's treated as a joke. And then there's the bullshit where Albus is unpopular at school, and Ron gives him a love potion to give himself a girlfriend. (Though to be fair, the love potion rape issue is in the original books, too).
I'm hearing people say that the live performance improves the script solely on the merits of the actors and the special effects. Bullshit. A good manuscript can hold up on its own. Besides, this script's dialogue was often unnatural and stiff, and I really can't imagine anyone delivering it naturally.
Aaaaaaand I'm mentally considering this play non-canon in three... two... one... Poof. Gone from my headcanon.