A wonderful movie, if only you open your eyes

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2002)

"The books are better!" "Ruins the book!" "Doesn't do the book justice!" "A complete waste of time!"
NOT TRUE!!!!
It really burns me the way people will criticize a movie based from a book. It seems that every single time it is done, we as an audience bitch about it, even if we sit around discussing "wouldn't it be cool if they...." about our favorite books. And when Hollywood steps up and does just that, we claim to hate it solely because it doesn't fit with our vision of the book.
BIG DEAL!!
Folks, understand two things;
1) when a movie is made from a book, some things have to change as a result, because what works in a book doesn't always happen to work in a film, because...
2) we as a movie watching society can hardly stand to watch anything that it longer than 1hr 45min in a theater....it tries our patience for some reason. And so Hollywood must try to condense subject matter as much as possible, and still tell the same story.
And once in a while, they pull it off, just as they did with Harry Potter. Now, I hadn't read the books when I watched the movie for the first time, and I thought the movie was great! It sparked my interest in the books, and have now read all four of them. The movie did not butcher the book at all...all the major events are there, as well as plot points and characterizations. Alan Rickman was a great Snape, mostly because he does a great job of being creepy. Maggie Smith was also perfect, because she always played great authoritative roles like this one, and the casting for the children in the movie was perfect as well. The scenery was beautiful, and it kept my interest all the way through.
I believe that the complaints listed around this movie are only there because people need something to complain about in any given way, especially about their entertainment. Listed below is a person who quoted the book in the descriptions of the children, and how the actors did not look like how the book describes them. They were actually perfect casting, and after re-reading the book descriptors, there really isn't much difference, so I put that down to nit-picking about details that really weren't that important. Who cares if in the film Hermione doesn't have BIG teeth. Go for the quality of her acting, not the size of her incisors.
If you don't nit-pick it to death, accuse it of being stereotypical, or cry out that it is a bastardization of the book, you'll look at it and see that it really is a good movie. I think that it would have been interesting to see people's reaction to the film if there hadn't been a book about it first.