weakest of the books, it's also a quite boring movie (spoilers)

Rating: 4/10 (8 December 2002)

I went to the theater in Rome with fair expectations last night, and I was quickly upset. I didn't really love the first movie, even if I 've enjoyed some nice ideas and visual effects... overall it was a fair children movie, with a linear story behind, not that impressive, but still entertaining for some.
Alas, this new HP movie really bored me down... 2 1/2 hours of the same long, repetitive and boring sequences, with absolutely nothing new compared to HP/SS.
On the positive side, I can save

kenneth Branagh's character (he's a hell of an actor, and he proves it, even if maybe Hugh grant was better for the part)

-the improved quidditch CGI (much better than the first one).
-Hermione Granger: she'll be a good actress, my bet is...

Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy: very good indeed, as usual when he plays the villain...

On the negative side:
1) the other children act terribly . Daniel Ratcliff and Rupert Grint are simply not as good as they should be.
2) the story lacks of interest and is reeeeally slow (that's a problem of the book anyway, which is the worst of all four)
3) Chris Columbus! He's not a great director, and proves it shockingly whit this film. Not only he's not on the same level of Jackson(director of the LOTR trilogy, which has been compared - wrongly- to the HP movie effort these days, who proved to be a great artist in his portrait of the wonderful Tolkien's vision), he's just a barely fair artisan, nothing more. His decision to adhere strictly to the book storyline is one of the causes to the film mediocrity.
4) CGI (apart from quidditch) is on average (especially the Phoenix and the spiders).
5) The other actors ,great names including harris (recently deceased) and Maggie Smith, simply aren't given the chance to act as they know, and all seem to ask "why am I acting in here?"...
6) the strongest points of the books (the school scenes, the lessons, the dream of all kids to be part of a big, magnificent magic school of old) are all gone and lost, sacrificed on the altar of the "plot crusade" which is so important to Columbus... He's no Peter Jackson, who also adapted a very difficult book to the screen - Tolkien's lotr - but with much better results... this is why this film is so mediocre and will be surely forgotten in the next years.
** on *****