Excellent

Rating: Null/10 (5 June 2004)

This movie was much less faithful to the book than the earlier movies. Many details were left out and others were changed. The changes were well done, though, as they made the movie flow smoothly and be much more dramatic. On the whole, this was the best of the three.
The actors playing Harry, Ron & Hermione are really coming into their own. They do a great job together.
The new actor playing Dumbledore is better than the earlier one. Of course, it's sad that the first one died, but it's nice that we've got this actor now.
Unfortunately, if you haven't read the book, you're not going to understand some of what happened, because critical linking facts were left out. But, well, you should read the book.
One thing that was interesting was that the book was much sunnier than the movie. The movie is dark, suspenseful, and frightening, while the book was still in the more cheerful mode of the earlier two. Perhaps the director realized, from reading the fifth book, that the series as a whole was going to get darker, and figured it would be better to foreshadow that, rather than making the change of mood so abrupt as it actually is in the books.
Another interesting thing is that the marketing people are clearly positioning this as a teenage movie rather than a kids movie. All the previews at the beginning were for teenage type movies.
I also noticed, by the way, that there was much more than the usual amount of advertizing before the movie started. They must have realized in advance that they had a great captive audience.
I am a bit concerned about what they're going to do for the fourth book. They had to leave out so much to make this movie. The fourth book is almost twice as long as this one. What massacre of the story will be involved, do you suppose? Perhaps they'll have the foresight to make the fourth book into 2 movies. I've often thought that Rowling herself ought to be dividing up these later books into more than one volume.