Outside of Harry's mean Aunt, Uncle and Cousin, there was almost no character development. There's no one, single toy that kids are going to run screaming, through the stores, that they want, if they've only seen the movie. (Maybe that's a relief to some parents.)
Norbert the dragon hatches out his egg and is then banished to Romania by Headmaster Dumbledore. What was that? I shed my first tear of the movie for Mattel at that point. Who's going to buy all those $40 dollar electronic "Norbert the dragon" toys after that?
Harry's final confrontation with Lord Voldemort is a real yawner. The whole rest of the movie was about as lively as a museum tour.
I guess you can tell I was real disappointed. I was looking forward to being entertained.
They paid a tremendous actor like Richard Harris to play Headmaster Dumbledore and then they use him like a display window mannequin. He had no lines.
The images of Harry's parents say nothing. The only two adult actors whose performances I somewhat enjoyed were those portraying Hagrid and Professor Snape.
It's as if they shot the movie and then they let their competition from Pixxar make the final cuts, so they wouldn't feel guilty about killing Monsters Inc. at the box office.
I hope I didn't spoil the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it yet, but I'm curious to see what others, who have seen the movie, thought. Am I being overly critical?
This reminded me of Kevin Kostner's debacle "Water World". How did Chris Columbus make a mediocre to bad movie with $160 million dollars to spend?