Better than the Book!

Rating: 9/10 (21 November 2005)

Wow, I loved the movie! It was so exciting and a real feat in terms of condensing things but making it still understandable to the audience. And I was thinking, yes! that was how Rowling should have done the book. The book contained a lot of flab-- it takes them how many pages to get to Hogwarts? As happens when a writer (director or anyone else) gets so successful they feel they don't have to listen to an editor. The Harry Potter and Cho thing was actually done much more believably in the movie. Lots of people told me the movie was really dark and scary but I actually think the last one was more disturbing with the Dementors. I actually found the filmed scene of the graveyard part not as disturbing as it was in the book. In the book Voldemort comes off as this gross bloody fetus thing and Wormtail hacking his arm off...I liked how it was down in a fairly non-freaky way in the movie. I still think Rowling kind of has trouble making the love stuff not come off cliché in the Potter books. I think Mike Newell did an excellent job with the actors. I've been keeping my eye on him since his early BBC stuff and he seems to strike the perfect balance in tone with the movie that I think works really well. Alan Rickman was absolute perfection as always of course! Loved the bathtub scene...heheh something for the girls at last and all the inuendo and humor. Definitely captured the humor of the books. (Too bad that element has been getting a little lost of late). The dark mark thing-- I always thought it would look more like a brand than a tattoo. The maze could have been cooler as well.