Superficial and a lot of missed opportunities

Rating: 5/10 (11 January 2013)

Basically, a film about a bestseller such as Harry Potter would have a lot of potential, if it would be directed as careful as the novel. Unfortunately, the narrative techniques of J.K.Rowling are not applied in the movie at all, although this would be quite easy to do.
There are several markers of carelessness in the movie. Firstly, the characters are weakly introduced, if at all. The worst example is the appearance of Firenze, the Centaur in the forbidden forest. He appears for the first time to save Harry from Voldemort, but Harry reacts as he would have known Centaurs for a long time and is not shy or fearful at all. This does not make much sense, considering that it is his first year in the world of magic. Secondly, the narrative thread is not very consequent. As a spectator, the narration seems to jump between only loosely connected scenes, which in my opinion does not allow to understand everything, unless you have read the book. An example for this is the flying lesson with Madam Hooch. Harry breaks the rules there, and he is caught by McGonagall. But the audience does not learn why Harry is not worried too much as he follows McGonagall, especially if you consider that he is supposed do be excluded from Hogwarts. This lack of narrative skills by the director shines through the whole movie, as you may find unfortunately many other examples such as this.
What I thought positive about the movie was the cast of actors and the theme music, although overused. I still believe it is not really a children's book, but the movie certainly is targeting children, which may be another reason for the superficiality and carelessness mentioned above.