Good effects, bad story-line

Rating: 1/10 (30 April 2006)

I planned on spending a night of my Thanksgiving break home from college watching one of my favorite books be put to the screen. Instead of seeing a book portrayed as a movie, I saw a movie portrayed as a Sparknotes guide. It touched most of the scenes in the book, but it put many out of order, and for those that were put in the correct order, they simply didn't flow and had poor connecting transitions. I felt that this movie to portray highlights from the book rather than being the book itself. The worst part about it is how bad Dumbledore was portrayed. He did not match the loving sage that Richard Harris gave us and that J.K. Rowling describes him as. Also, the whole rise of the dark lord was skewed, and it should have been one of the covert themes of the movie, but it didn't become what was the main point of the book until the last 20 minutes of the movie. Overall, I had to explain to many people why things happened when the movie should have depicted it better.