Not bad, but should've been two movies.

Rating: 7/10 (4 November 2013)

This was a decent movie- the acting was great (especially for kid actors), the script was sound, and the ending hits the right notes. That said, it was also a flawed movie, and I'm somewhat disappointed this film will settle for being "good" when the book was so great.
This review is from the perspective of someone who read the book- those who haven't read it might feel differently, but here's what I thought.
PRO's: The casting, the sets, and costumes.
First and foremost, the casting and acting in this film are its best assets. Ender (Asa) is perfect, exactly how I wanted him to be. Gaff (Harrison) is also terrific. This is the most fun I've had watching Harrison Ford in a long time. That said, there were some scenes, some lines that I thought should have been more emphasized. Bean, Valentine, Bonzo, and Bernard are the others who will leave an good impression...even if they change some things from the book.
Next, the sets and costumes- again, nearly perfect. Loved the school uniforms and the corridors. The battle room and spaceships are also very well realized- and more or less make the story feel real. The special effects in general are good, but it's so hard to create original special effects these days, so not much really stood out to me (except the zero gravity scenes).
CON's: Rushed story, some unimpressive choreography.
First my minor gripe- the space choreography and battle room scenes left me unimpressed. The battle room scenes especially kind of let me down- they seems a touch over-simplified, and don't show Ender's genius as well as they do in the book.
Another minor gripe- didn't care much for how the aliens looked. It was another run-of-the-mill bug-alien design- seen it before, didn't leave an impression.
My major gripe is that the movie moves WAY too fast. Things happen so quickly, they often feel "too easy" or insignificant. The whole video game subplot is done in about two scenes. Those scenes in the book are really stretched out, and we see how they torture Ender and wear him down there. But here it's over almost as soon as it begins. Similarly, Ender's progress through the school happens so quickly that we never feel like he's being pushed *that* hard. If Ender isn't really suffering, we don't really care. You could argue that the key events of the story are still there, and that's true- but the book is more about Ender as a person than the war going on in space. And of all the secondary characters, only Gaff and Bonzo are given decent development in the movie- everyone else is clearly there to fill a gap in the story progression (a real shame, since in the book everyone interacted with Ender organically, and nobody felt like a contrived "device."). Even Valentine, for all Abigale's effort, resorts to being a fairly simple character- not like the conflicted, emotional yet brilliant person she was in the book. And lastly, Peter is hardly in the movie at all. I suppose if it's from Ender's point of view that makes sense, but we don't get any sense of Peter's twisted genius here- a true loss.
So in conclusion, if the same production values could have focused on two movies instead of one, we would have a true work of art here- a film on the level of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Instead, we get a rushed version of a great story- which results in a pretty good movie.