Yeah, my son and I saw the movie today. It is, as reviewers have noted, the darkest of the Potter movies, though not so dark as to frighten my ten year old. There’s a little less dwelling on the whimsical element of the magical world than in the others and lots of adolescent sullenness. Unfortunately, you have to be acquainted with the characters through the books and/or the previous movies for the character development (such as it is) to make much sense or to win your sympathy for them. This is especially true of the Harry-Ron-Hermione trio. The older Weasley twins provide the lion’s share of the comic relief (and they’re good at it).
Bottom line: like all the others, this movie is inferior to the book. We’ll buy the DVD and enjoy it, as we have the others, but none of the Potter movies come as close to doing justice to the books as Peter Jackson’s efforts did for LOTR. I also have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll like this movie more.
For what it’s worth, the theater wasn’t full for the showing we attended (noon today).
I couldn’t agree more.
**disclaimer** I am not being a troll and starting a fight, I am genuinely asking...
Are the Harry Potter books really that good, or has it been so long since the mid-twentieth century flowering of literature that people will rally to anything contemporary which is even passable? The poverty of imagnination in the last few decades has been pretty stunning, after all.
Folks, the movie is agony. Waaayyy below the other three, with the contrast particularly unpleasant after the excellence of the last one, Prisoner of Azkaban (is that the right spelling, Potterheads?) We’re talkin’ boring, hard to follow for those who haven’t read the book (I’d read about a fourth of this one), and long... The prettiness,and a number of funny moments, don’t make up for the problems. And it’ll freak out your wee ones if you take them with its hyper-intense, but still flat for adults, scare scenes. Don’t tell my wife, folks, who adores the series dearly, but I haven’t suffered this much since...since...geez, I think even the Lion King was better.
I will not make a final decision on whether or not to see this motion picture until I read a review of some sort from weblog contributor Julie Ponzi. She consistently has the best reviews.
I enjoyed the movie, though I think there is something to what Carl says, if you haven’t read the book, aspects of the plot will be hard to keep up with. The trouble is that the book is quite long and very detailed. Making the Potter movies is no small task. Fans like my wife and kids, who know the books in great detail, will be hugely dissatisfied with a movie that glosses over too much of the plot, but doing the whole plot would probably require a four hour film, which isn’t feasible. So they end up having to compromise somewhere in the middle. Much to the contrary of what Carl says, most serious fans of the books think that Prisoner of Azkaban was, by far, the worst of the first three films because it glossed over much more of the book than the other three. That may have made the movie more enjoyable for Carl by reducing the length, but it enraged the Potter fans, who are the primary market for the films, in the end.
My nine year old went, and she wasn’t scared at all. She has read the books multiple times though.
As a more casual fan of the Potter series than my fanatical family (though I have read all of the books), I thought it was the best of the four movies at bringing the book to life, which I think is the ultimate purpose of the Potter movies.
Haven’t read the books; enjoy long movies. I didn’t like this movie as much as there was a lot that happened that had no relevance to the movie itself. A lot that made me turn to my fiancée and say, "What?", a lot of details that were required pre-knowledge or post-knowledge that the book apparently provides. The plot was a bit darker, which is fine by me, but the film was also visually dark, which is not fine. I watch a movie to see what happens, not to see as a character in the book might see (unless the shot is 1st person).
Personally I think Serenity did a much better job of bringing up inside information that only FireFly fans knew without alienating the rest of the audience.
The best part of the movie was the Superman teaser trailer that is played beforehand.