Rushed and watered down...

Rating: 5/10 (30 July 2007)

I watched this movie with low expectations, having been disappointed with the previous efforts of bringing Harry's magical universe to the visual realm. It is obvious that only a few of the key plot points of an 800 page book can be included in a 2 hours movie, so I will not comment again on that.
Positives first: This was an entertaining movie which flowed much nicer than the previous adaptations, I thought. The cinematography and general "mood" of the colours used were very fitting for the theme of the story. The books get generally darker, and so should the movies. As an example, I felt that the scenes leading up to the dementor attack were well done in therms of lighting and pacing.
This leads me to the negatives: The CGI was very overdone, everything from magical creatures to the whole magic aspect of casting spells was made into a disneyesque, sparkling pretty mess. The dementors had none of the tangible physical aspects that make them so scary (I recall them being described as "smelling of rotting flesh" in the books). Instead they become floating CGI ghosts that pass through walls. And wizards don't duel while flying around in clouds of smoke and wind! It was as if they were half ghosts too!
In general I think the watering down of all the violence and sadistic evil increasingly associated with Voldemort and the Death Eaters, while understandable given the target audience, makes it impossible to portray the rest of the series in the way JK intended it. Their pure entertainment value can be reasonable, such as is the case here, but can not come close to the mood and ultimate philosophies of the books and will remain mass-market family fare.