Harry Potter's Greatest Hits

Rating: Null/10 (18 November 2001)

(Spoiler alert)
I've read the books and was really rather looking forward to the film. Practically every casting that was announced made us all go "Yes! Yes! that's just right", particularly Alan Rickman as Snape and Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid. The trailers looked good, the music sounded just right and everything. All the reviews we had seen praised it to high heavens.
And boy, did it look good. It oozed production values out of every pore, the acting was, by and large, superb (though I wasn't actually that impressed with Harry himself, who came across a little bland - like a spectator) and it remained largely faithful to the book in that they didn't alter stuff too much.
What they *did* do is cut it to shreds. Now, I can understand that this is a film primarily aimed at kids, and a 4 and a half hour film is going to be waaaay too long. We sat between two families and the kids were fidgeting an d getting bored half an hour in.
But unfortunately, what we end up with is Harry Potter's Greatest Hits:

We zoom through the introductory stuff, whizz through Diagon Alley, a quick train journey and we're there.
Oops. We're supposed to have met Draco Malfoy twice by now. Better introduce him now before the sorting.
Can't be sorting everyone, just do the major characters and move along.
Broom lesson - Harry's good - Quidditch - and off we go to the next big set-piece scene.
You get the general picture.
Mostly, it's fairly seamless although occasionally there are times when a plot point was removed that gives our characters a reason to do something. In the book, we find ourselves in the forbidden corridor after Draco challenges Harry to a duel, sends Filch instead and they run, first from Filch then from Peeves (Rik Mayall, sadly cut) and find themselves in front of a locked door, the other side of which is Fluffy.
In the film, they just wander up there. OK, yes, the staircase moves so they can't get where they *were* going, but there's no particular reason for them to say "oh well, we'll go this way instead".
The main thing that the film ends up missing out, however, is characterisations. We hardly see anyone except the three heroes and I've heard a lot of people saying "X was good. Pity s/he didn't have much screen time." Even Draco Malfoy, bane of Harry's life, and the supposedly-evil Professor Snape get to do little more than sneer at Harry occasionally, just to show us that they're the "bad guys".
Someone complained in another review here that everyone was so darned Anglo-Saxon. Of course, we never actually got to meet the Patil twins or Ravenclaw seeker Cho Chang, and dreadlocked Lee Jordan is relegated to being a Quidditch commentator and general extra. Another casualty of the need to get the time down.
Like I say, I can understand why it was done, it just left me feeling like I'd eaten a cream puff. Tasted nice, but you're still hungry afterwards.