Grossly overrated and needlessly long this is only good in parts

Rating: 6/10 (5 December 2005)

Judging by some of the reviews here you'd think this was a masterpiece though to be fair others tell it like it is. And I am coming to it cold without having read the book. There are good moments, especially the first half hour and the first contest but then the film flags dreadfully and never really recovers. Not only is each contest less exciting than the one before but there is an interminable sequence around the school ball which hammers the same point time after time after time: yes teenagers suffer social embarrassment and yes so do older folk but we don't need huge swathes of repetitive screen time to learn this again and again plus endless scenes of clichéd whimsy. This whole section could have come down to 10 minutes max (it feels like five time that length) and left more time for the story which is often confused and suffers weird time jumps.
Also while the children/teens are good, some of the elderly British cast should be ashamed of themselves. Michael Gambon gives an utterly lifeless performance as Dumbledore ('Dumblebore' more like). It sounds like he doesn't believe a word of it. The report card for him as for the film? Could Do Better!