My two word summary - "It's Awful"

Rating: 2/10 (30 November 2004)

Each movie in the Harry Potter series (and of course the books they are based upon) is about the experience of Harry Potter and his two closest friends as they attend Hogwarts. His experience is based upon a wonderfully detailed back-story and interaction with dozens of students, staff, and faculty at the school. I think that Alfonso Cuarón missed the whole idea of the experience at Hogwarts when filming this movie. In the end with the way the movie is cut and the story presented the movie is just a bad horror film for teenagers; a number of people compared this movie to the Goonies, which is a lot better movie. I have read that there was a stated goal to produce a two hour long movie rather than three hour long movies of the first two. I have never understood the idea of shortening a good movie, as a fan I would have seen a better movie no matter what its length three or four times in a theater, rather than just once; there are a number of missing scenes in the movie that would go along way to improving this movie. While there is of course an argument on whether you would almost have to start over to improve this incredible awful movie. Alfonso Cuarón (and others involved in production) was in my opinion in love with the stupid special effects during the movie that did not advance the story line; especially with so much of the back-story missing. The transition between the seasons was interesting, but they took too long, and after watching the deleted scenes they could have been longer. The moving pictures in the frames became a distraction, was the giraffe really necessary? The Knight's Bus scene was way to long for the length of this movie, and the talking head was annoying, and the idea that Harry Potter could lie was entirely skipped. I was upset they changed Harry time at the Leaky cauldron, skipped the scene with McGonagell and Hermione, and I could go on and on. Almost all of the foreshadowing in the book was cut from the movie; however J.K. Rowling indicates that two scenes foreshadow later movies. All in all a dismal movie another movie like this could greatly affect the status of the franchise.