By Far, The WORST Movie If You Really Like The Books:

Rating: 3/10 (20 November 2005)

I can't help, but to compare the Harry Potter movie to the books. If you want to re-write the books don't call them "Harry Potter" anymore.
Whoever put the last two Potter movies together, has kicked the books right in the butt. I know there is an extreme amount of material to cover in a movie like this, but if Peter Jackson can do such a wonderful job on the "Lord of The Rings" series, they could do a better job on these as well.
Not everything in the movie sucked. For instance... I thought the portrayal of Lord Valdemort was very good. Probably the best acting of the whole movie. Followed by Mad Eye Moody. I wasn't too pleased with the look of Moody, but I still feel he was one of the stronger characters.
There were several critical areas of the book that weren't covered. Especially the character of Rita Skeeter. HORRIBLE casting for her, and they completely skipped the whole point with her. There is more involving Rita in the following books, and it won't make any sense because they left that stuff out. The worst character by far was Dumbledore. Dumbledore has an extreme confidence that oozed from his charisma and knowledge in the books, but in this movie, he is a short tempered angry confused old man. Not the character everyone describes in the book as "The only wizard that Valdemort ever feared."
I have to say the movie really went south for me in the heavy metal goth scene at the Dance. Complete with crowd surfing midgets!! WTF? Where in the heck did they come up with that? I am thinking someone in the board room was saying "we need something with Moxy for the soundtrack... whadda ya got for me? Nine Inch Nails impersonators? I Like it! Make sure you put some magical Harry Potter looking stuff on the drums and guitars. Bits of cloth and such... LAME!!!
Then there was the complete disappearance of the blast ended Scroots, No mention of the Dursleys AT ALL. The hedge maze scene was completely revised, No follow through on Hagrid's interaction with Madame Maxime and their link to the giants. The list goes on and on.
I also want to say, they couldn't stick with trimming out stuff from the book, they had also to add items that could have been easily left out that had no importance whatsoever. The nearly boob popping Mermaid on the wall in the bath chamber for one. WAAAY too much attention was put on that lame unimportant item. Another was the entrance of the girls from Beaubaton. I know it is hard to portray girls that are supposed to be so beautiful, but the way they handled it in the movie was terrible.
Okay, I will get off of my soap box now. I just felt the need to voice my disappointment with the movie, and more so, my disappointment with all of the Rave reviews by people saying how great it was.. Are we really that out of touch, or do people not care about good character development and a good story, over scads of special effects? I want to say I noticed. Not everyone bought into the Potter Hype, and it does a disservice to such amazingly good books. Thank you for listening to my rant. If this makes sense to you, we should probably become movie critics together. I'd love to lay it on the line without buying into the corporate spoon-fed formulaic garbage they try to force down the gullet of the American movie goer.
Peace.