The film had potential, the child actors went ahead and let the film down though.

Rating: 6/10 (2 August 2007)

This film made a good attempt in bringing the book to the screen. Nevertheless, this film seemed to have it all an outstanding British cast, an excellent location and a great story, but somehow it did not result in the masterpiece for what it should have been. My conclusion is that David Yates was not the right person to direct, I looked on his profile and so far he has only done television work. This explains why a lot of the final scenes were so woody and why the editing was so poor that the film was barely able to flow. I think it was therefore wrong to enter him into the Potter franchise, where he is still a novice when it comes to blockbuster films.
The main problem for this film was that not enough depth from the book was obtained. If it was aloud to run over 3 hours, as opposed to 2 hours 18 minutes than a more stronger grasp of the story would have resulted. Instead the film just seemed to scratch the surface and ended up becoming more light hearted than exhilarating.
What made the film were the actors, such as Imelda Staunton who portrayed Dolores Umbridge, Helena Bonham Carter's role as Bellatrix Lestrange and Ralph Fiennes molding of Lord Voldemort. These actors in the limited time frame they had made the best use of it and brought what little electricity there was to the screen.
Whereas, the rest of the perfect cast was wasted due to their limited screen time. You have the modern British greats working on this film Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Brendan Gleeson, David Thewlis, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Jason Isaacs, Michael Gambon, Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane. Yet they were literally given a couple of sentences each and that was their lot, I don't even though why they bothered to turn up on set. In particular it was heartbreaking to see Gary Oldman, to me he is my favourite actor, but Gary you have gone from being bad to good and somehow you have lost your ways of stage presence. The way they killed you off really did not leave much to the imagination, go back to your old ways. Alan Rickman you did not have as much screen time either, but I am glad to see that your are now providing a better portrayal of Snape.
The kid actors were another story, they were all either just a bunch of moody teenagers or just overly enthusiastic. Hats off though to Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood, you not only provided a great acting debut, but you separated yourself from the rest of the pack.
Overall, I expect to see more depth in the next film with better use of characters or you might as well just write off the Potter franchise now.