Just like the book, but not in a good way

Rating: 2/10 (15 June 2002)

Word for word, it followed the book. Some people may see this as a good thing, but the best film adaptations of books are the ones that take the FEELINGS and THEMES from the book and transform them from the written format to the screen. This movie, however, was like listening to a cassette of the book with silly little special effects and poor animations carrying out the actions.
For a kids movie, this was entirely too long. I had a time sitting through the dull 2 1/2 hours, and I'm an adult. There was no plot, no action, just a whole bunch of character development. Maybe the next 2 movies will be better now that we've got all the characters, the school, the history, the animals and the spell components established.