if you've read the book....

Rating: 1/10 (11 July 2007)

Well, let me put it this way, it's 2 1/2 hours of my life that I'll never get back.
There was soooo much detail left out. The scenes were choppy, seemingly unconnected; nothing was explained. There wasn't any character development. It's as if all they (the filmmakers) were concerned about was getting the gist of it, on film.
It wasn't well established, the horrible summer Harry was having....how angry and isolated he was feeling....how he was hiding under the window outside in the grass trying to listen to the news....the tension between Harry, Hermione and Ron, when they all reunited for the first time at the Order HQ's... nothing about the Prefects had been mentioned.
The Dursleys in the book, threatened to kick Harry out until Dumbledore sent the screaming letter to the aunt reminding her of her vow.
The Order itself was not fully established either. The history of the house at 12 Grimmauld Place and the screaming portraits of Sirius Black's mother.
Professor Umberidge was a rich and nasty character that they didn't fully develop or exploit. How she kept Harry from playing Quidditch - in fact Quidditch wasn't even mentioned and this was the first introduction (in the book) where Ron played for the team and how his confidence affected his playing.....
The Threstrals and how they've always been a part of the school - not used at all - just a mere side note....not to mention, that there wasn't any reference whatsoever to how the others who had not seen death, how they were coping with riding the animals they couldn't see.
There was absolutely no reference to the Pensieve which Harry got caught sneaking a peak at Snapes memories....had that been established, it would have gone a long way to explain why Snape was so P.O.'d about Harry having witnessed his torment at the hands of Harry's father when they were in school.
In fact I would say that nothing about the story, or the characters in the story was explored at any length whatsoever. True enough, the story is getting darker, but in the book, there were plenty of comical moments, not so much in the film.
The relationship with Cho wasn't developed or explored at all, what about when they all went into town and Harry and Cho had the date at the sweets shop, and how she got ticked off when Harry had said he'd meet with Herminone.
And it wasn't Cho that squealed, it was her friend, Marietta AND it (the movie) didn't go into hardly any development of the D.A.
The D.A. and how it came about, the fact that calling it Dumbledore's Army was in jest.
The twins and the development of their characters and how they were testing things out for their jokes shop never took place. Without any mention of Quidditch and how they had received lifetime bans from playing Quidditch, their decision to leave school before their seventh year didn't seem to have much of a basis. What a waste too, there wasn't nearly enough madness and mayhem shown in the movie that the twins caused as their final farewell to Hogwarts.
The hospital, St. Mungo's and the introduction of Neville Longbottom's storyline was completely left out. I think this was a grave injustice to the plot, as it goes to give more background to Harry later on that it could have been either him or Neville. Again, no character development.
There was absolutely no use of Gary Oldman or Emma Thompson or Maggie Smith, even Alan Rickman seemed like set dressing. Such a waste of wonderful etraordinary talent.
The story of Professor Trelawny and why Dumbledore kept her around because she was the one who foretold of the prophecy and Dumbledore was the one who filled in the gaps about the rest of the prophecy as he was one of the two witnesses.
I just wanted to quote my mother, who is a dedicated Harry Potter fan "The action was good, but there was no storyline." That's the bottom line. No storyline, whatsoever, which is utterly disappointing, given how rich, engaging, with multi-layered complexities the actual story in novel form is.
Honestly, if I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't have known what the hell was going on....there wasn't any continuity, the story didn't flow.
If I were J.K. Rowling, I'd be mightily P.O.'d at how they'd butchered my fantastical tale of the boy wizard. - But that's just my opinion.