I got to see it last night. Yes, I'm the sort of person who goes to movies on a weekday, before 6pm. That way you both get a matinee rate and are guaranteed entry into the most popular of movies. As proof, there as NO line for Harry Potter, and maybe 20 people in the entire theater.
What will stick out for me as a pinnacle of success for special effects and book-to-movie translation is Buckbeak. That was the most perfect example of a hippogriff I have ever seen brought to life.
They took from one of the more distinctive raptors for his "bird" half, an Ornate Hawk-Eagle, and put it together with a dappled gray. The way the feathers raised on the back of his head, the way he galloped as he flew, the way he expressed himself: all was plausible and understandable, giving a hint of intellect and sentience without undue anthropomorphising. Bucky was a work of art, and worth the price of admission alone.
And now for the spoiler tags....
[spoiler] You can definitely see a different director's influence here.
In the previous movies, you rarely saw any student out of uniform, and those times were when they were off-campus only. And the clothing was classic, still having a relative formality or 1800s influence. Here, it's hard to tell the difference between Hogwarts and any other school. Literally
half the time, our threesome is in jeans, Nikes, and sweaters. The only thing that could have made it MORE casual would be the inclusion of T-shirts. I've got mixed emotions over this. Yes, it is good to be able to see the students as real people. When coupled with that "animal candy" scene early on, having casual clothing grounds the kids in reality. It proves that they're real people, with real emotions, real friendships, real internal needs.
But this very grounding takes away from the fantasy element of wizard life. It's so strange to see Hogsmeade-bound students wearing literally the same stuff you'd find at any High School in America, and yet the adults are wearing early 1800s-influenced formal gear. This is more than just "kids wear sweatshirts, adults wear Armani suits"; it makes the kids look more like muggles than wizards.
The outdoor vistas were great, and the Whomping Willow, also known as the world's biggest Venus Flytrap, was a welcome bit of humor. (You'd think those birds would learn after a good 20 or so years....) The only problem with them is that suddenly Hagrid's place has been moved roughly 200 miles further away from the entrance and exit of Hogwarts. In the first movie, it was just a walk across the lawn, visible from the entrance. Now you have to go quite a ways to get to it, at least a 10 minute walk. It may be that Hagrid was deliberately moved sometime in the plot, which would explain the slightly different look of the place. But since that was left out, we're left to wonder just why our sense of space and time took such a left turn between films.
And speaking of Space and Time, the "time" references were everywhere. The massive, gothic clock setup at one of the entrances; the standing calendar stones; even a "throwaway shot" of an older student reading Stephen Hawkins'
A Brief History of Time. (That last one I also have mixed emotions about. It could be taken to mean that some kids are still interested in muggles, that Stephen's theories are truly universal, or that maybe Stephen has some wizarding parentage that we aren't aware of.... But, once again, it brings the muggle world into Hogwarts, and disrupts that fantasy feel: science has very little place in a world where you can inflate people like balloons.)
Hermoine's "time twister" is only prominent if you
consciously look for it. If you're searching for it, you'll see she's wearing a chain in
two classroom scenes out of 20 or 30, and in one of those scenes she's tucking the chain in her uniform. Otherwise, you don't see it at all, until it's revealed at the end. Actually, it's very subtle. It's just all the time hints bring it out more to those who've read the book.
But having read the book, and knowing that poor Hermoine was self-destructing from lack of sleep, I was hoping to see a bit more of that in the film. Just the fact she had a worse-than-average temper wasn't enough for me. I wanted the effects of long-term sleep deprivation, dammit! Anyone who's done an all-nighter and looked at themselves in the morning knows what it's like. I wanted sallow skin, sunken cheeks, incomplete grooming, a dulled look in the eyes. Instead, I got a minor hissy fit in Trelawny's class, and an outburst at Malfoy.
Speaking of Malfoy... forget how much Harry and Ron have grown. Look at Malfoy! 0_0 Jesus, I almost didn't recognize him at all! The distinctive "Malfoy" features (sneer, blond hair, snobbery) are there, but he could just as well have been replaced with another actor. He's
really growing fast! I wager he's gonna be 6 feet tall when he finishes, if not taller.
The new Dumbledore was perfect. He settled right into Sir Ian's role like he'd been doing it all his life. And the performances by the others, both newcomers like Trelawney and Lupin and old favorites Snape and Hagrid, were stellar as always. I was delighted with the casting for Cornelius; he was the perfect, petty bureaucrat, something that will become more and more important as the movies progress with the books. But I was disappointed with the executioner. I'm not sure why they cast him as a hunchbacked "Igor", because in the book he was a tall, strong, and handsome (if evil) man. That was such a departure, for no obvious plot reason, that it left me with ever-famous mental whiplash. [/spoiler]
The movie is worth seeing. It's well-done. Yes, many parts of Rowling's book have been left out, but her books are so richly-detailed that there's
no way to bring them to life in their entirity. It would be a disaster. As is, this one is a good 2+ hours long. They chose carefully which parts to discard and change. My only "I'm not so sure of that" moments were solely with the director's style.
So here it is - my random take on the movie. There may be tiny, miniscule spoilers, but not enough to warrant the tags, just a warning. Overall, I thought it was great! I actually enjoyed it much more than the previous two. The reasons, I think:
And sometimes really subtle - I really liked how Hermione is still just as much a part of the group, but at the same time, the boys are starting to sense something different and mysterious about her as she matures. There were obvious plot reasons for her secrecy, but I liked how it ended up having a double-meaning.
Or not, if you're under age 
I thought the movie was pretty good... I just didn't like [spoiler]that they didn't really do much quidditch, but, hey! what can I do? Or that they had to run through the same things again... I mean, couldn't they have run through the parts that they had to do again? It's still pretty good though...[/spoiler]
He just wasn't how I pictured him... Wasn't he supposed to be all thin?
Now, If he had said page 69, that would have been REALLY nasty... 
)
"Hurt Harry Potter, you shall not!"
