A movie for kids

Rating: 4/10 (14 June 2019)

To evaluate the movie adaptations of books, I try to see the movie as a standalone object, and try to evaluate how the movie works for someone who did not read the underlying book. And as a person who did not read any of the Harry Potter books, I believe I am in the position to make this evaluation objectively. I can say that for the first movie of Harry Potter Series, this way of thinking signals a huge failure. The movie just assumes that you know all of the significant background information about this universe. Everything just... happens, you do not understand how, and no one cares to tell. No one is surprised of any magical stuff going on.
Of course during the movie adaptation of this depth, lots of important stuff is cut to fit the content to 2 hours, and it significantly damages the narrative. I had the same experience in Lord of the Rings. But at least in those movies there was the acting, and the character depth. In Harry Potter, there is almost no acting. And no character depth at all, we have no idea who the characters are, what are their motives. Half of the movie is allocated to the pointless scenes of the three main characters, and we are not even told who Dumbledore is, who Voldemort is, what is the story of Hogwarts etc.
To sum up, I did not enjoy the movie at all. It is unfortunately nothing more than a movie for kids. I do not say this as an insult, if it was caategorized as a Kids movie, I would have rated it differently. But obviously the movie was marketed as a movie for everyone, that is why I evaluate it this way.