Fairly disappointing if you've read the book

Rating: 6/10 (18 November 2005)

To preface everything else I'm about to say, this movie was pretty decent. If you're a hardcore fan of the books, you will likely be disappointed as I was, simply because it does not follow the book very well. But, the movie alone wasn't that bad.
Before going in to see this movie, I knew that parts of the book would have to be cut out to fit it all into the two and a half hours it takes up. However, how much was actually removed is just shocking. I felt like everything except the most essential parts of the book were gone, just vanished, no reference ever made to them. I won't give specifics as I don't want to ruin anything for people who may not have read the book, but if you have read the book, you will notice that HUGE parts of the story have been removed. Whole chapters are completely gone. This was quite disappointing to me, as many of the best parts of the book aren't in the movie.
The movie itself felt rushed. It jumped from scene to scene, and you could tell that everything was done as quickly as possible to make the movie fit into its time frame. When I left the movie, I honestly wondered if I would have even been able to keep up with and understand what was going on if I didn't already know the story from the book.
I know that the people this movie is marketed to would disagree with me, but I'd personally prefer that the film-makers just made it four or five hours long so they could tell the whole story. As the story moves forward, the books get longer, and the movies stay the same length. I'm hoping that the Order of the Phoenix movie is a vast improvement over this one, but I have little faith that it will be.
Overall - if you're looking for a fun, fairly entertaining movie to go to, go see this. If you're looking for a movie that follows the book, you will be disappointed.