I outgrew this film and its source material when I was a fetus

Rating: 1/10 (24 December 2001)

My sister, bless her heart, used to work in a bookstore, and brought the novel this turkey is based upon home one day. After everyone else in my family had read it, I decided to give it a go because I had little better to do at the time. I wound up throwing the book across the room in around thirty pages, feeling that not only had my intelligence been insulted, so too had the already-persecuted-enough faiths of Wicca and its pagan relatives.
So when I was given the chance to see this film for free, as long as I delivered my considered opinion to the local distributor when it was all over, I knew I should have let someone else take the assignment. But I just couldn't let fate smack me in the face once without giving it a chance to even out the marks. I basically had a similar reaction to the film that I did to the book: I walked out on it in about thirty minutes. As for what I told the local distributor, it runs something along the lines of missing the book's feeble, so-obvious-it-will-make-you-shake-your-head-in-despair attempts at satire and not being all that well-acted to boot. It is nothing more than a 152-minute commercial for a bunch of merchandise that is basically useless and prone to falling apart, but it does have Harry's visage on it.
Since this film has been released in Australia, there has been constant comparisons between it and the upcoming Lord Of The Rings adaptations. There is no comparison for the following reasons: LOTR treats its audiences with respect, LOTR treats the faiths, cultures, and peoples it takes a lot of its details from with respect, and LOTR is not aimed at the lowest possible common denominator. Now that I have that out of the way, I'll just sit back and bask in my superiority to HP fans until the local distributor gets around to releasing LOTR this boxing day. :P