Sbenny.com is trusted by 
Name of the movie you are reviewing: Harry Potter series (2001 - 2011 )
The Harry Potter series is a series of movie adaptations based on the novels by the same names, written by J.K. Rowling. They follow the life and rise of a wizard boy named Harry, focusing on his education at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Magic, bonds that he creates with his fellow students and a nearly impossible battle against one of the most powerful dark wizards of the era.
Review:
I've watched Harry Potter movies since I was really young, so I technically grew up with them. I own all the books as well and have read them a million times over, so my review might be a little critical of some parts of the movie adaptations.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was a very clear cut story of a boy who, at the age of eleven, finds out he has magic abilities after one of the most prestigious schools of wizardry invites him to attend it.
The story is simple, and the movie isn't cluttered with too many characters that a child audience couldn't keep track of. The CGI and effects at the time weren't the movie's strong suit, but they manage to hold up even still. The main cast, children at the time (obviously, I'm a genius), did their jobs flawlessly—very cute, very endearing and funny. If someone messed something up or acted too stiffly, I never noticed. Maybe a few things seemed a tiny bit exaggerated, but they're kids, you can't expect them to perform like seasoned Hollywood actors. 7/10, it's pretty solid.
The second movie, Dungeon of Secrets, is my favorite. The atmosphere that the movie manages to build is delightfully eerie without being too scary for kids to watch... though I have to admit that when I first saw it at the age of seven, I was pretty much crapping my pants over the whispering basilisk that moves seemingly through walls, and the messages written in blood on the walls didn't really help either.
Same cast, same director—the first movies, more aimed at a child audience, both had scores that fit the world of Harry Potter perfectly; uplifting and somehow simply magical. The scene direction was clever as well. Nothing seemed cluttered or unnecessary. The costumes were adorable. I'm particularly fond of what Harry's homeroom teacher is wearing, a dark green suede dress? A witch hat of the same color? Fabulous. You go, classy witch lady Maggie Smith. Perfect image of elegance. 8/10, very good watch.
The third movie is where things get a little dark, both thematically and visually. It's called the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry has finally hit the big 13, now officially a teenager.
The entire movie is tinted in darker colors and atmosphere, and everything looks a little... sickly greenish? The story is still focused on friendships that Harry holds on to, but with the addition of a bond he never asked for in the form of his long lost godfather (allegedly guilty of aiding You-Know-Who (who murdered Harry's parents)) who manages to break out of a highly secure wizard prison... well, things get complicated. The building unease that Harry has to go through as everyone around him warns that Sirius Black must have fled the prison just to kill him makes for interesting character motivations. Instead of being only scared, Harry wants to confront him eventually, should they ever meet.
The movie adds more scary elements, which fits with the theme of prisoners being tortured for over a decade and going mad and running away, and the score changes into something more somber and unsettling to give you that sweet sweet feeling of impending doom. 6/10, despite a lot of things going on, some parts of the movie are very slow, and things get unnecessarily dramatic in the early beginning when the drama should've been shifted to the end parts.
Sickest werewolf transformation though, it was really spooky!
Numero quatro, the Goblet of Fire.
Okay, we are going up higher in the gritty and edgy scale.
Now we have wizard terrorist attacks, convoluted secret plots and a massive wizard tournament that's 17+ only because apparently kids can and have died during the whole thing.
Our fourteen year old protagonist, due to unforeseen circumstances, ends up as a contestant. Shocker there.
There is a lot of plot going around, and some of the details from the first three movies are starting to tie up into something that isn't exactly very clear until the last couple of scenes of the film. Costumes keep getting craftier, but the score in this film lost all touch with the bits of magic the previous ones had, so it's very tedious to have to listen to the same song fifty thousand times over and over again during an almost three hour long movie.
CGI looks cool though. Dragon looks absolutely stunning.
Love the part where they dump a grown ass man in a cauldron and cook him. 5/10
Number fiiiiiiive. Order of Phoenix!
As a movie it would perhaps be solid enough if it weren't so teenage angsty, even though I get that that's the entire point of it, feeling trapped and like the adults are making choices for you when you can make them yourself, blah blah. There's a bit of a n*zi inspired regime that starts with this movie and continues all the way to the second part of the last one that I'm not entirely sure what to make of.
A lot of things and characters got cut from this movie, so when the one that follows it is forced to bring those characters back because of a lot of plot things, the viewers are left confused and mystified by how this two bit nobody showed up here like he's been known from the start when he hasn't made any appearances before it.
Unlike Movie 4, Movie 5 is viewed through a blue lens instead of a green one, which makes the entire film seem cold, I don't know, this is some movie major stuff and all I can do is complain about how the film is trying to look cold when the season in the film is spring, or even summer for that matter, but there's probably a lot of symbolism to it about how Harry feels ostracized and alone now that he's met his nemesis and a whole lot of other things.
This used to be my second favorite book, but as a movie I don't like it too much. 4/10, it's also almost three hours long but instead of adding things that are relevant to the plot and characters they focused on romance scenes and imaginary arguments and nonsensical dialogue.
Bye.
We've come to number six at last. The Half-Blood Prince. Harry is sixteen and you get to watch him struggle with hormones and social anxiety for three hours. Mood, right?
It's not very fun, but the special effects have kicked it up a notch (likely at the expense of having thrown about half an hour's worth of book content away), and the hopelessness and gloominess has reached its boiling point. The dialogue is more creative, and the acting gets vastly better than it was in the five parts prior, during which Alan Rickman single singlehandedly carried this franchise on his back.
(I'm just joking, but you have to admit he was brilliant.)
The scenes are set up in interesting ways, viewed from different angles and such, so watching Harry do absolutely nothing gets less boring that way.
The plot twist was handled beautifully, though, and the sad and mournful score that guides you through the movie builds the tension almost perfectly. 7/10
Last but not least: the seventh and final one, The Deathly Hallows.
You may remember the annoying bootleg illuminati necklaces that people sold on tumblr under crazy pricing when they could be bought on Amazon for like a dollar. Well, this is where the symbol originates from.
I'm going to be honest, in my opinion, the last movie was handled the worst, and it's entirely because of how the previous ones blatantly didn't add characters to where they were meant to appear and then had to be shoehorned forcefully into the seventh film, complicating the watcher's entire world.
Who's Mundungus Fletcher, and why should you care about him? No idea, but he shows up for like two seconds and is introduced as a petty thief (he is in the books too, but he's Harry's friend in Order of Phoenix, so the scenes that happen with him in the seventh book are more shocking) before he's shoved away and completely forgotten. The movie forgets that it hasn't handled precious characters that are somewhat integral to the world that they're in and tries to fool you into thinking that they aren't that important, just folks passing by.
Same as the characters that get dug up after being shoved under the staircase, plot points emerge at random and are explained just barely at all to make a lick of sense. The entire six hours of that film equate to you leaning forward in your chair, squinting at the screen and going "well alright, I guess if that's what's gonna happen".
The character deaths that do happen are handled terribly, like they have no impact at all, since all the film does is show you half a second of some of the mainish cast crying or slowly closing their eyes in supposed grief. The big finale was vastly more dramatic than its book counterpart, yes, but the movie completely NEGLECTS TO RESOLVE THINGS THAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KNOW BEFORE THE FINAL BATTLE. They just don't do it. They just don't. I don't know why, I don't understand why, they had all the time in the world to focus on that instead of filming agonizingly awkward romance scenes between Harry's two best friends, and Harry and his girlfriend, and Harry's schoolmates.
Some characters are just left without motivations and are absolved of all guilt and screentime forever.
The first half of the movie is three hours long but it feels like it takes fifty million years because by God nothing is ever happening, they're just sitting there brooding and no one is coming to any useful conclusions or mentioning past plot points that might have explained the later scenes in the next movie, but no, that's cool, just don't do that, just film Harry staring blandly at the leafy ground for a total of eight minutes and that'll be totally fine like that. Thanks, really.
Effects are cool, atmosphere is fine, but the movie is equivalent to season 8 of Game of Thrones in terms of trying to cram all the important stuff they could've focused on earlier into the last couple of minutes of the second part of the film. 0/10, I seriously dislike that one
Thank you for reading!
Would you recommend this to other users? I would recommend you still watch the series despite the horrible letdown that is the last two movies (7 1/2 and 7 2/2) if you're a fan of fantasy. The first two are endearing, still charming despite how old they might seem these days. The characters are relatable and the wizarding world is fascinating and vast. The first two are the best in the series in my opinion, because they capture the magic of it all perfectly.
Reading the books is totally optional and up to you, but after seeing the final movie I recommend you give the book a glance or two, because it handles the darker themes a lot more maturely and just infinitely better.
Rating(1-5):
The Harry Potter series is a series of movie adaptations based on the novels by the same names, written by J.K. Rowling. They follow the life and rise of a wizard boy named Harry, focusing on his education at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Magic, bonds that he creates with his fellow students and a nearly impossible battle against one of the most powerful dark wizards of the era.
Review:
I've watched Harry Potter movies since I was really young, so I technically grew up with them. I own all the books as well and have read them a million times over, so my review might be a little critical of some parts of the movie adaptations.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was a very clear cut story of a boy who, at the age of eleven, finds out he has magic abilities after one of the most prestigious schools of wizardry invites him to attend it.
The story is simple, and the movie isn't cluttered with too many characters that a child audience couldn't keep track of. The CGI and effects at the time weren't the movie's strong suit, but they manage to hold up even still. The main cast, children at the time (obviously, I'm a genius), did their jobs flawlessly—very cute, very endearing and funny. If someone messed something up or acted too stiffly, I never noticed. Maybe a few things seemed a tiny bit exaggerated, but they're kids, you can't expect them to perform like seasoned Hollywood actors. 7/10, it's pretty solid.
The second movie, Dungeon of Secrets, is my favorite. The atmosphere that the movie manages to build is delightfully eerie without being too scary for kids to watch... though I have to admit that when I first saw it at the age of seven, I was pretty much crapping my pants over the whispering basilisk that moves seemingly through walls, and the messages written in blood on the walls didn't really help either.
Same cast, same director—the first movies, more aimed at a child audience, both had scores that fit the world of Harry Potter perfectly; uplifting and somehow simply magical. The scene direction was clever as well. Nothing seemed cluttered or unnecessary. The costumes were adorable. I'm particularly fond of what Harry's homeroom teacher is wearing, a dark green suede dress? A witch hat of the same color? Fabulous. You go, classy witch lady Maggie Smith. Perfect image of elegance. 8/10, very good watch.
The third movie is where things get a little dark, both thematically and visually. It's called the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry has finally hit the big 13, now officially a teenager.
The entire movie is tinted in darker colors and atmosphere, and everything looks a little... sickly greenish? The story is still focused on friendships that Harry holds on to, but with the addition of a bond he never asked for in the form of his long lost godfather (allegedly guilty of aiding You-Know-Who (who murdered Harry's parents)) who manages to break out of a highly secure wizard prison... well, things get complicated. The building unease that Harry has to go through as everyone around him warns that Sirius Black must have fled the prison just to kill him makes for interesting character motivations. Instead of being only scared, Harry wants to confront him eventually, should they ever meet.
The movie adds more scary elements, which fits with the theme of prisoners being tortured for over a decade and going mad and running away, and the score changes into something more somber and unsettling to give you that sweet sweet feeling of impending doom. 6/10, despite a lot of things going on, some parts of the movie are very slow, and things get unnecessarily dramatic in the early beginning when the drama should've been shifted to the end parts.
Sickest werewolf transformation though, it was really spooky!
Numero quatro, the Goblet of Fire.
Okay, we are going up higher in the gritty and edgy scale.
Now we have wizard terrorist attacks, convoluted secret plots and a massive wizard tournament that's 17+ only because apparently kids can and have died during the whole thing.
Our fourteen year old protagonist, due to unforeseen circumstances, ends up as a contestant. Shocker there.
There is a lot of plot going around, and some of the details from the first three movies are starting to tie up into something that isn't exactly very clear until the last couple of scenes of the film. Costumes keep getting craftier, but the score in this film lost all touch with the bits of magic the previous ones had, so it's very tedious to have to listen to the same song fifty thousand times over and over again during an almost three hour long movie.
CGI looks cool though. Dragon looks absolutely stunning.
Love the part where they dump a grown ass man in a cauldron and cook him. 5/10
Number fiiiiiiive. Order of Phoenix!
As a movie it would perhaps be solid enough if it weren't so teenage angsty, even though I get that that's the entire point of it, feeling trapped and like the adults are making choices for you when you can make them yourself, blah blah. There's a bit of a n*zi inspired regime that starts with this movie and continues all the way to the second part of the last one that I'm not entirely sure what to make of.
A lot of things and characters got cut from this movie, so when the one that follows it is forced to bring those characters back because of a lot of plot things, the viewers are left confused and mystified by how this two bit nobody showed up here like he's been known from the start when he hasn't made any appearances before it.
Unlike Movie 4, Movie 5 is viewed through a blue lens instead of a green one, which makes the entire film seem cold, I don't know, this is some movie major stuff and all I can do is complain about how the film is trying to look cold when the season in the film is spring, or even summer for that matter, but there's probably a lot of symbolism to it about how Harry feels ostracized and alone now that he's met his nemesis and a whole lot of other things.
This used to be my second favorite book, but as a movie I don't like it too much. 4/10, it's also almost three hours long but instead of adding things that are relevant to the plot and characters they focused on romance scenes and imaginary arguments and nonsensical dialogue.
Bye.
We've come to number six at last. The Half-Blood Prince. Harry is sixteen and you get to watch him struggle with hormones and social anxiety for three hours. Mood, right?
It's not very fun, but the special effects have kicked it up a notch (likely at the expense of having thrown about half an hour's worth of book content away), and the hopelessness and gloominess has reached its boiling point. The dialogue is more creative, and the acting gets vastly better than it was in the five parts prior, during which Alan Rickman single singlehandedly carried this franchise on his back.
(I'm just joking, but you have to admit he was brilliant.)
The scenes are set up in interesting ways, viewed from different angles and such, so watching Harry do absolutely nothing gets less boring that way.
The plot twist was handled beautifully, though, and the sad and mournful score that guides you through the movie builds the tension almost perfectly. 7/10
Last but not least: the seventh and final one, The Deathly Hallows.
You may remember the annoying bootleg illuminati necklaces that people sold on tumblr under crazy pricing when they could be bought on Amazon for like a dollar. Well, this is where the symbol originates from.
I'm going to be honest, in my opinion, the last movie was handled the worst, and it's entirely because of how the previous ones blatantly didn't add characters to where they were meant to appear and then had to be shoehorned forcefully into the seventh film, complicating the watcher's entire world.
Who's Mundungus Fletcher, and why should you care about him? No idea, but he shows up for like two seconds and is introduced as a petty thief (he is in the books too, but he's Harry's friend in Order of Phoenix, so the scenes that happen with him in the seventh book are more shocking) before he's shoved away and completely forgotten. The movie forgets that it hasn't handled precious characters that are somewhat integral to the world that they're in and tries to fool you into thinking that they aren't that important, just folks passing by.
Same as the characters that get dug up after being shoved under the staircase, plot points emerge at random and are explained just barely at all to make a lick of sense. The entire six hours of that film equate to you leaning forward in your chair, squinting at the screen and going "well alright, I guess if that's what's gonna happen".
The character deaths that do happen are handled terribly, like they have no impact at all, since all the film does is show you half a second of some of the mainish cast crying or slowly closing their eyes in supposed grief. The big finale was vastly more dramatic than its book counterpart, yes, but the movie completely NEGLECTS TO RESOLVE THINGS THAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KNOW BEFORE THE FINAL BATTLE. They just don't do it. They just don't. I don't know why, I don't understand why, they had all the time in the world to focus on that instead of filming agonizingly awkward romance scenes between Harry's two best friends, and Harry and his girlfriend, and Harry's schoolmates.
Some characters are just left without motivations and are absolved of all guilt and screentime forever.
The first half of the movie is three hours long but it feels like it takes fifty million years because by God nothing is ever happening, they're just sitting there brooding and no one is coming to any useful conclusions or mentioning past plot points that might have explained the later scenes in the next movie, but no, that's cool, just don't do that, just film Harry staring blandly at the leafy ground for a total of eight minutes and that'll be totally fine like that. Thanks, really.
Effects are cool, atmosphere is fine, but the movie is equivalent to season 8 of Game of Thrones in terms of trying to cram all the important stuff they could've focused on earlier into the last couple of minutes of the second part of the film. 0/10, I seriously dislike that one
Thank you for reading!
Would you recommend this to other users? I would recommend you still watch the series despite the horrible letdown that is the last two movies (7 1/2 and 7 2/2) if you're a fan of fantasy. The first two are endearing, still charming despite how old they might seem these days. The characters are relatable and the wizarding world is fascinating and vast. The first two are the best in the series in my opinion, because they capture the magic of it all perfectly.
Reading the books is totally optional and up to you, but after seeing the final movie I recommend you give the book a glance or two, because it handles the darker themes a lot more maturely and just infinitely better.
Rating(1-5):
