Not the best Harry Potter movie

Rating: 4/10 (8 March 2006)

Having read the book, I knew that the script for this movie would need to be pretty condensed for time. Still, I must say, I was disappointed by some of the scripting and direction decisions. Forgetting the omission of some key plot elements (i.e., house elves, Weasley's wizardly wheezes, expanded role of Sirius Black in Harry's life) that are integral to the next installment in the series, I was surprised by some of the additional plot elements added to tie up loose ends and explain missing elements (i.e., the quidditch world cup game, the introduction of Barty Crouch, Jr at the beginning of the movie??, the expansion of Neville's character to make up for the absence of others).
Some of the condensed/new story elements were pretty good...the expansion of Neville's character comes to mind. The special effects for the first and second tasks (except for the underwater hostages) were well done, and the graveyard sequence with Voldemort was sufficiently creepy.
The editing is almost too tight. For the first 90 minutes of the film, you jump from scene to scene without any transition. This makes it feel like you are being shown clips of a longer story (I actually checked the remote to my DVD player to make sure I wasn't playing the disc in preview mode :-( )
My main beef though is the portrayal of Dumbledore in this film, which others have mentioned. It is extremely inconsistent with the character that was developed in the books and in the last 3 movies.
As a book fan, I may not be the most objective movie reviewer. But if I had only seen the movies, it have been would be very hard to follow this one if I wasn't familiar with the book.