Not horrible

Rating: 1/10 (24 June 2004)

Wow. Before i saw this movie i said, "after the first 2 movies and a better book to base this one off of, How could they go Wrong??" Famous last words.
First, the good. They really captured a few things perfectly if not better than expected. The Book of Monsters and Buckbeak were Awesome!! In Fact, the book of Monsters was even better than what i imagined. Buckbeak, looked REAL!! Nice combination of animatronix and CGI. Pretty impressive there. Besides this, you would be hard pressed to find much more positive about this flick.
Direction and costume choices were just that, choices. They totally disregard all mage robes, pointed hats etc. I guess after spending all the money developing Dementors, they decided to cut cost by letting the kids wear jeans and t-shirts. it looked odd. The Direction wasn't all bad but it was far from good. (spoiler)The touching sceen between Black and Harry was about as touching as watching someone fry in the electric chair. And harry even blows it off. "he invited me to move in " this is probably the most important part of the books, their relation ship. but i guess who needs story. I think he took a page from the MEn in Black Director. "i don't care what you are doing in the sceen, as long as you are constantly saying your lines" everything was rushed and confusing. OH, and those stupid segways between scenes (whomping tree shaking off snow or eating birds. the kids singing Bubble Bubble Toil and trouble) if you are planning on dropping 75% of the story, why not drop these segways (which had to be 20 minutes of the film)and instead of 75% dropped you might pull off just 50%.
NEXT! they left out MAJOR HUGE plot points. 1) who is Padfoot, Prongs, wormtail 2) what was the relation ship with Harry's dad, sirus, lupin and wormtail 3) what the hell was with the glowing stag running across the pond, who btw didn't show up again when they replayed the sceen when they went back in time 4) where the map came from 5) ron's replacement pet 6)never even came close to explaining why and how sirus was framed or even WHAT really happened 7) sirus' innocents......never cleared. the only thing was Lupin saying "Oh, he's a good guy" and no mention of that again.
These are the major plot points dropped not to mention dozens of small things/characters that play a major part latter. (when did Dementors start flying?)
A) i am happy that this director didn't have time to do the 4th one "I will still be destroying the 3rd film much less have time to ruin another" B) I'm worried if they settled for this for the 3rd what the hell will they look at for the 4th. (Longest of the three books makes the shortest movie.) which is even longer than the 3rd.
I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone who Hasn't read the book....you will be totally lost.
How can you let this happen. J.R. can not be happy except she got the huge pay day i guess.
On the beer scale, this is a 7 beer movie. you might get lucky and pass out half way through it. This movie is rated PP....Pretty Poor