Action without characters

Rating: 6/10 (18 November 2005)

I just came home from watching this movie, and I have to say I'm disappointed. After seeing the "The Prizoner of Azkaban", I was really hopeful about the direction in which the movies were going. Sadly, it's going the wrong way again.
The movie feels like chapters being cut from the book and then simply put together. My sister, who hasn't read the books, had a hard time following from time to time, and I don't blame her. The beginning went incredibly fast but without any explanations to things happening. They just happened, and that was that. The rest of the movie followed the same pattern. One action scene is followed by another without a trace of character development.
On the plus-side, the actors get better for each movie (with the exception of Radcliff who still needs to learn proper face expressions). The movie also looks incredibly nice.
As I said before a whole lot of material is cut from the book. Entire characters are lost. This confuses me as to who the movie is meant for. It can't be people who hasn't read the books, because they can't follow it. Neither do I think it's a movie for the hard-core fans. To much of the stuff the fans love have been taken away. What did you think when you let this pass through Rowling?
My reason for my high vote is that the movie is still capturing. I don't regret paying to see it. I'm simply hoping that for the next movie the tempo is cut down, and character development is brought forward. The books deserve that.