Close...but no cigar (POSSIBLE SPOILERS)

Rating: 6/10 (3 June 2004)

This was a fun film, well told. The change to a darker, more adult theme is set up from the start with grainy film and hand-held camera work (two Columbus no-nos). It is interesting to compare it to Y Tu Mama Tambien. The themes of growing up, leaving one's parents, the inevitability of fate, the possibility of glimpsing the future... it's all in the two of them. Some of the visual stuff is great: the train icing up when the Dementers appear for example. BUT, but - as so many have said, and I have to enter my ha'penneth - this cuts too much from the book. There needs to be more dialogue - difficult when the director obviously was trying to keep something visual and pacy. But so much was left out that is intrinsic to the wonder of the book, which is so moving and wise (yes, really!) The connections between Pettigrew (Wormtail), Lupin (Mooney), Black (Padfoot), and James Potter (Prongs) are not touched on in the film AT ALL. And Dumbledore's final conversation with Harry, when he says it is our choices as much as our abilities that determine who we are. I know that a film can't be a book, but sometimes, just sometimes, you can do something even better. This falls between two stools - too faithful to be a complete re-imagining, too faithless to fully convey the reason why the books are so successful. Timothy Spall was a good rat though!