Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (28 August 2004)

Whoever hired this director should be smacked hard. That was about the worst choice they could have possibly made for Director. He needlessly changed so much. Why change the whole look of the school? It was wonderfully magical in the first two movies. In this one it looked totally different, and to no purpose. The costumes also were terrible. Dumbledore looked more like a homeless person than a headmaster of Hogwarts. I realize you were working with a different actor, but you could at least stay true to the character from the book. And what was the deal with the kids' costumes? They were always wearing street clothes when the books made it clear they only wore clothes like that when they were in the Muggle world. Effects were okay, although I agree with a lot of other people that the werewolf stunk. It looked like he somehow stopped transforming half way through. Finally, the look, the tone of the film was all wrong. In the first two movies the muggle world was all gray and flat, reflecting Harry's view of that world. Then the wizard world at Hogwarts was colorful and vibrant because that was where Harry really came alive. This movie, though, has the wizard world all flat and gray and dingy. Why? To what purpose? I know the kids are growing up and becoming more adult, but Hogwarts shouldn't change. We could get a perfectly good picture of the kids growing up without changing the school from a vibrant magical world to a dreary awful place. I was horribly disappointed in this movie. Whoever hired this director for this movie must have been drunk to think he could pull it off. One final thing: the imdb trivia mentions that the fountain at the school has eagles eating snakes because it is the symbol on the Mexican flag where the director comes from. What rubbish! It is perfectly fine and appropriate for him to put imagery like that into a movie about Mexico. But this is a British film about a British school in Great Britain, for pity's sake! Get over yourself already and don't put pointless extra stuff in that doesn't fit in the story. Sheesh!