A few things...

[catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk]

Hi all,

Having now seen the movie three times (once a week ago, then twice on 
Friday), I feel more qualified to be as critical as initially wanted 
to be.  There are several things about it that I am not happy with - 
as follows:

Mainly, how one-dimensional most of the characters were.  Richard 
Harris was a very unsatisfactory Dumbledore - particularly when 
contrasted with Ian McEllen as Gandalf in the LOTR trilogy.  Rupert 
Grint was, I grant you, a great child actor, and had brilliant comic 
timing - but he was, again, a very one-dimensional Ron - I didn't get 
any sense at all of the real Ron, and I thought the swearing, 
although mild, was very unsubtle, and that his original lines in the 
book were much more effective.

I thought Emma Watson was superb - a little over the top, but that 
was to be expected, and Hermione was very over the top in PS as well. 
I agree with Penny that the whole "killed, if not worse, expelled" 
line and Ron's "She needs to sort out her priorities" really didn't 
work - made absolutely no contextual sense whatsoever.  I also didn't 
like the fact that the film didn't really show how they weren't 
really friends before the troll escapade.  Why couldn't they have had 
Ron hoping  that she wouldn't be in Gryffindor, instead of saying 
that she's mental?  Why include that ridiculous trophy scene AND get 
the details wrong?  I don't understand that at all.

Sean Biggerstaff.  Excellent - I agree.  Lovely voice, good 
expression, nice bit of physical acting.  However, as much as I 
thought he was good, he didn't really portray Oliver in all his 
intense, agonised desperation - he was far too laid back.

I have moaned before about the replacement of good lines from the 
book with less funny ones - including the Devil's Snare, Hermione's 
dentist scene etc.  What rankled more on repeat viewings was how the 
screenplay had obvioulsy done a hatchett job on some of the original 
dialogue.  Certain scenes smacked of lack of understanding of what 
was going on in the book.  In particular:  (Warning, when I mentioned 
this to Neil and Co on Friday, they looked at me as though had gone 
mad and taken the meaning of LOONiness to new heights)

Dumbledore's speech about areas being out of bounds.  He covers the 
Forbidden Forest (now the Dark Forest), then goes on to say that he 
has been asked by Filch to "remind" everyone, that the 3rd Floor 
corridor is out of bounds.  Why remind?  This is the first time it 
has been out of bounds, because of the stone.  I then realised that 
they wanted to introduce Filch, but wanted to cut the part about no 
magic in the corrridors (time?) so cut two lines in half and stuck 
them together, thereby losing the sense of it and creating something 
which I found very annoying.

This is done again during Dumbledore's hospital scene with Harry - 
that scene really doesn't work at all.  Again, with the centaur 
scene.  He says something along the lines of "This is where I leave 
you"  Where?  Why?  They haven't gone anywhere?  Surely they could 
have changed it to reflect that he is leaving him because Hagrid has 
turned up.  Another very annoying and badly done scene.

It's a shame that this film, which has so much going for it, is 
spoilt in part by sloppiness -even things such as Harry calling Draco 
Malfoy Draco, instead of Malfoy rankle.  Quidditch was spoiled for me 
the second time round because I realised how truly awful Lee Jordan's 
commentary was.  Heidi also noticed that Dean knew what a Remembrall 
was - I know it was probably to get him a line - but surely anyone 
would have known that he was Muggle born.  I missed his red card line 
as well.

OK, will stop moaning now. 

Catherine