obviously a preteen movie

Rating: 4/10 (28 November 2005)

I'll be brief. I did not enjoy sitting through this movie. While fantasy films are fun for me, there are some things about this film that got to me:

laden with sexual themes / love that did not relate to the main plot so much as they were to goad it for girls, they didn't even really build upon the relationships in the past HP movies - you perhaps expect to see Harry become something more of a wizard but instead he just stumbles through everything as usual, not really using his noodle - magic can be used to solve any problem, there are no constraints around it whatsoever, all it takes is asking someone or searching through a library and then you suddenly have the ability to defeat any situation. this might satisfy kids but someone looking for a plot will be disappointed - some of the settings were outlandish, even for fantasy. The Graveyard dripped Goth stereotype. - CG still has to come a long way before it becomes convincingly realistic, so it should be used sparingly, but it isn't in this movie - the climax wasn't so obvious as it was just dumb. The warlock was either evil or an impostor of the real guy, you knew it had to be either one. How many times did they have to show him drinking that potion? - The acting of everyone in the movie was 'forced'. By that I mean it was not natural, but this is a problem with all of the Harry Potter movies (except for the original Dumbledore). - They aren't trying very hard to make fantasy creatures look cool anymore. Those sea people were just...ugh. The dragons weren't so grand either. - The invasion of Voldimorte's (a cliché-sounding goth name) forces at the start made little to no sense, and happened pretty damn soon. What was the deal with that skull and snake in the sky? I'm not looking for a thematic explanation so much as a 'why they even bothered putting it in the story'.

Well, that's as brief as I can get. If you like the Harry Potter series you'll want to see this just for the heck of it. If not, don't bother...