Thursday, November 24, 2005

Harry Potter and the movie that fell short

Kristen and I saw Harry Potter on Wednesday afternoon. Afternoon showing was not crowded and only a few annoying kids.

I give the movie 3.75 out 0f 5 stars. It was enjoyable, with a lot of end-of-your-seat action (especially towards the end). But there was little character development -- even of new characters. Dumbledore seemed to be mailing it in. Sirius had one scene. Of course the biggest compliant one hears is that the movie leaves too much out from the book. Which is true--necessarily so-- for any book longer than a 100 pages or so. But they left out some essential dialogue in the graveyard scene, and that was a big mistake. Yeah, I missed not seeing Dobby and the house-elfs, but that is not as essential to the story line. The bit of dialogue left out is very important to the overall plot arc that runs through all the books, and that really hurt the movie.

Still, it was great fun to see everyone back on scene and in action.

BTW, did I mention that I edited a book on Harry Potter? Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts