Good movie for the fans of the movies, bad for fans of the book

Rating: 6/10 (18 November 2005)

I just attended the midnight screening of the movie here locally and left feeling very torn as to how I felt about it. If you are a big fan of the movies you are going to love this one, it has everything you could want in a Harry Potter movie and everything wraps up quite nicely. If you are a fan of the books however you are going to be left with a big hole in your heart as this leaves out entirely too much of the story for it to resemble the book. Normally I wouldn't care if a movie strayed from the book, but this one not only strayed, it changed major plot points and left very important material out entirely. I'm not going to name specifics of what was left out and what was left in, or even go into detailing why I'm mad about them being left out, because I don't want to bash the movie, because it was done well, and I want to be sure it does get credit where credit is due. I am interested to see what happens next though, I have just started reading Order of the Phoenix, so I'm anxious to see if any details that were left out come back to haunt the film-makers, though I have a feeling that Steve Kloves wouldn't allow anything to be cut that was important to the overall story-line. But through all of this it is very clear that Mike Newell, though talented and is successful in making a great movie, definitely missed what the focus of all the books is and how the characters should behave. I doubt that the book was read by the director beforehand and doubt further that if it was read that the others were read along with it to get the point of the series and what makes them good and engrossing. I'm glad I saw the movie, and I will get the DVD when it comes out, but I will keep notes handy to explain to friends that watch it what all REALLY happened in Hogwarts that year so they don't miss the important things along the way.