**SPOILER** Something went wrong

Rating: Null/10 (4 July 2004)

Although I still think the books are some of the greatest kids' literature in a generation, the direction taken by this movie has left me somewhat cold. It was brought to my attention in spades when I took my grandson to see the film.
"Harry didn't change schools, did he grandpa?", he asked a few minutes into the movie. Of course, he knew that he hadn't but he was commenting on the radical differences between Chris Columbus' and Alfonso Cuaron's interpretation of the physical layout of the grounds at Hogwarts. While it is a director's right and responsibility to make a movie "theirs", when one is dealing with a franchise like HP and the visuals have already been established, better to make your mark in other, more subtle ways.
Other than that, my biggest complaint was that at the end of the movie I felt that we had been rushed through, which is to this point, the best story in the series. JK Rowling's wonderful plot development seemed to have been reduced to "cameo" type treatment in the film.