Titanic waste of talent and money

Rating: Null/10 (16 December 2001)

Awful. The biggest Xmas turkey of all time. The book has taken the world by storm and yet there's not enough in the movie to interest anybody other than die hard fans who feel they can't miss the incarnation of their favourite characters.
Principal blame must be laid at the door of the mindnumbingly unimaginative script. Robbie Coltrane is one of the greatest comic actors of all time - right up there with WC Fields - and despite appearing twice lifesize with an hilarious costume, his funniest line is "I don't think I was supposed to tell you that". Criminal delinquence abounds - Alan Rickman utterly wasted, John Cleese given two lines of exposition, Julie Walters, Ian Hart, Zoe Wanamaker given nothing at all to work with. Living with Dursleys looks like it might be more interesting than Hogwarts, largely because Richard Griffith and Fiona Shaw can turn even this ham into something tasty.
And then there's the truly awful, pedestrian direction, which shows most in the failure to extract a single memorable second from the obvious acting talent and leaves the suggested talent, particularly that of Daniel Radcliffe and the amazingly promising Emma Watson, totally untapped.
I'm sure the reason behind the book's success is that it got kids thinking - using their imaginations. It certainly doesn't appear to have worked on the crew of dismal underachievers responsible for the film.