not as good as it should have been

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2005)

I just watched it this afternoon, and I was not impressed. Of course, it looks good and polished and everything, but there are flaws in the story and in the filming of it. I never read about films before seeing them, and I do this so that I don't go into the theater with expectations of what the film is supposed to be, except that I expect it to be well-made at the very least. This film suffers from technical problems which frankly should not be an issue in a film like this: it has a massive budget and an experienced team. Now by technical problems I means issues of continuity from one shot to the next (specifically, after Dumbledore greets the Beaux-Batons headmistress and then hops up for his speech) and computer graphics simply not looking right (when Harry returns after losing the Hungarian dragon and flies over the crowd, and Krum under the effects of the shark-head spell). These types of things bothered me a great deal. The story aspect of the film I can forgive because this is a massive story to condense into a film. In the end however, the movie feels incomplete, as if there are gaps that should have been filled but weren't. The movie is unable to stand by itself as a story: the viewer needs to have read the book to know completely what is happening. And n my opinion, this is a weakness. Overall, I found this film to be mediocre. I think it could have been better made by another director.