Flat-out disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (30 December 2007)

How can a movie be filled with actors who are flat, boring and don't come near the emotional potential of Rowling's original characters, yet be so hyper-active and jumpy that you feel like you're going to have a seizure? If this sounds like a fun movie experience, this is the movie for you!
The mark of a good movie is that you can totally immerse yourself in the story, feel for the characters and pass the time believing in the world that the director has created for you. If you are constantly being pulled out of the story thinking "what the H was that all about??" or "wow, this guy couldn't act his way out of a paper bag!!" then the movie is worth nothing more than the plastic it's printed on.
Book/movie story comparisons aside, I simply don't know how you could possibly understand this movie without having read the book. I'm sure there are lots of people out there who do watch only the movies and I wonder how the story translates to them? Can you understand the complex snippets of disjointed story that are being thrown at you? Or are you just mindlessly slavering over Dan Radcliff's pale skinny body and have no brain cells left for anything else? Yup... that's what I thought. Quit being mad and go back to your Tiger Beat fantasy. The one where you're slathering sunblock on Danny boy. Lots and lots of sunblock...
I think the biggest frustration with this movie is all the unrealized potential. The humor from the Weasley twins. The evil, power-hungry wretch of Dolores Umbridge. Instead she's played as a slightly pompous Queen Mother. Boring! The furious and unpredictable teen-angst from Harry (I'm not sure Radcliff's acting ability could have pulled it off, so maybe it's OK they skipped that part). Sirius in the movie is just... bizarre. Not a lovable godfather but more of a weirdo goth recluse.
The visual effects are getting better - at least there are no rubber-band stretchy people like in Sorcerer's Stone. But everything is deliberately changed and shot so fast and from strange angles that you lose the story trying not to vomit from the shifting screen perspective (aka Blair Witch).
I hate how each new director has to put his own little "spin" on the story to make it his own. Get with the program guys! So, back to the mark of a good movie. I couldn't watch more than 4 minutes of the story without wanting to reach through the screen and poke Radcliffe in the eye to see if I could elicit any kind of emotion. The rest of the characters were mildly annoying. The special effects have probably caused several thousand undocumented cases of epilepsy. And at the end of the movie I didn't feel anything about any person, good or bad. So, as a movie experience this one fails utterly. After Goblet of Fire I had really resolved to be done with the movies, but I heard that this one was not that bad. Apparently I need to learn that "not that bad" still means "not very good either".