Cliffs Notes' adaptation of the novel

Rating: 2/10 (1 July 2009)

I was so excited when this came out. I had high hopes, I read all 7 books, I had seen the previous movies. Even further, I went with a friend to the IMAX when this movie came out. I thought that nobody could screw up Harry Potter.
Well, to this day, I'm still kicking myself for thinking that.
To David Yates: Who are you and what have you done with Harry? This is the perfect example of when someone rushes a movie adaptation of a book. There were SO MANY things missing from the book, or tampered with, it's ridiculous.
For one, let's begin with the length. 138 minutes???? Are you kidding me? The other movies were in the 150 area and this gets only a measly 138 minutes? The book is 870 pages and this movie gets a stinkin' 138 minute length? Well, thankfully that warned me for what I was about to see:
The Cliffs Notes version of the book.
Whittle the longest book in the series to the shortest movie and you get this. Now let's start on what was either screwed up or missing:
-The Cho Chang/Harry Potter arc. What a missed opportunity. And Cho being an evil snitch? WTF PEOPLE. SHe betrays Harry in the movie. Wow. -No Hospital scenes -No Neville's Parents -No Snape's Wretched Memory -The Department of Mysteries. It was multiple rooms in the book, here it's one room. -Voldemort possessing Harry... WTF? I don't remember reading that in the book. -Mrs. Figg was terrible. I can't even mention her... in the book she was this quirky and fun character, here she's just this evil and deceptive hag that we couldn't care less whether or not she dies. -Sirius' death. I got really depressed when reading that moment in the book. It was one of the most powerful scenes ever written in literature. Here, instead of shedding tears, I was thinking "Ugh, thank God. At least that means the movie is close to the end."
There's more I could name. This movie is so awful it's not even funny. It had a stellar cast, a great source for material, excellent effects... but then it took a book as complicated as a plate of spaghetti and made it into... a plate of spaghetti.
If you read the book, watch this movie, but prepare for disappointment. Had it not been for the IMAX 3D at the finale, I'd have had a day ruined.