Finally, they do it correctly

Rating: 8/10 (19 November 2005)

The first tip-off that this may be the first adequate Harry Potter adaptation is that is rated PG-13. It says that there might be actual acknowledgment that there's scary stuff in here. Three murders, real evil, sexual innuendoall the grown-up stuff , or at least, grown-up to 14 stuff, is here.
First, off, I *love* the books. I will never think that making the movies prior to the seventh book being finished, but at least this one avoids most of the continuity problems which plagued movie 3. However, book 4 is an actual adaptation of the story, not some director's imposition of teenage-angst in lieu of being able to translate a mystery properly onto the screen.
The three mains do a passable job here, their best yet, although Dan still has a while to go before he'll be able to pull off strong emotion without looking like a fool, and his line to Hermione at the end should have been cut or reserved for someone with more subtlety. But he does a fair job, and gets a few good lines which he pulls off with aplomb--"How could anyone have possibly understood that?!" Truly stealing every scene they appear in, however, are Fred and George. They do a hilarious job berating Ron, trying to cross the age line, and in general, just playing the hysterical, perfectly normal older brothers that J.K. Rowling wrote them as.
And, all told, the boy-girl thing is done eighty times better than in any movie previously. Partly because they're older and can pull it off better, and partly because the direction and script allow them to act normally for their age. Particularly touching and funny is Neville, who gets some wonderful scenes around the Yule Ball, but Harry gets some good moments talking to Cho Chang, and the script uses many a clever double-entendre to play the humor of various situations.
But by far the most astounding performance is given by Ralph Fiennes, who's Voldemort, in the New York Times, was described as "the best on-screen performance ever delivered without a nose." He's scary, he's ugly, he's pure evil. And he's well done. The only bad thing about his performance is it's lack of length--but he'll get some great scenes in five and six, and they are to be anticipated.
Unfortunately, Gary Oldman gets the short shrift in this film, although Sirius' character was a reasonable cut to make, along with the house-elves, and given the amazing amount of plot that had to be cut out to turn a 750 page book into a 2.5 hour movie, the cuts that were made were smart, and the alterations to the plot were both minor and believable in the context of the adaptation.
Overall, a slight minus for the still not so great acting from Dan Radcliffe and Emma Watson, and the lack of Oldman and enough of Fiennes, but wholly, a good movie, and at long last, a movie adaptation that preserves both the magic and the mystery of Harry Potter.