Well maybe not, but god damn I'm pretty bummed. My brother bought it earlier today and I just got finished watching it.
I was shocked at how uninspired and dead everything looked. Obviously the same Hogwarts castle is used, but it seemed like all the life was sucked out - color, lighting, everything. The same goes for the surrounding environments. You could argue that this realer art direction makes sense considering the events that occur in the book but it still felt depressing, and not in a good Tim Burton way; hell many of the portraits on the walls don't even move. The direction really didn't help bring things to life either - out of all the films this one seemed to have the least style. On more than one occasion I couldn't help but be annoyed at how average everything was. Harry's dream sequences and the Occlumency flashbacks were especially unimaginative. The Ministry of Magic goes from a giant, sprawling government building to what looks like a big mall. Where's the magic?
I'm not the type of person who demands the films follow the books 100%, in fact my favorite one is still PoA which takes many creative liberties. I've read OOTP more than the other books and essentially know it front to end - it's simply too long and layered to faithfully adapt to film. But despite that I was still shocked at how much was skipped, ignored, and altered. The changes are apparent from the first scene, which I felt was logical for pacing issues. But the complete absence of Mundungus and the tagged-on Ms. Fig were jarring to me.
I'm not going to bitch about the cutting of much of the Grimwauld stuff; while I enjoyed Mrs. Black, Buckbeat, Sirius vs Snape, etc I realize that stuff wasn't too important for the film. Interestingly the script originally cut out Kreatcher but Rowling lobbied for him to be included due to his importance in the seventh book. But while Kreatcher is in the film for a couple minutes, Dobby is totally missing - instead of him finding the Room of Requirements for Harry, Neville seems to find it somehow. There's no Quidditch, Hagrid and many other characters make weak cameos, the more interesting rooms in the Department of Mysteries are missing...eh, no more bitching.
I'm also bummed there weren't more Sirius scenes. The few scenes Oldman has are great. I also thought Belletrix was done pretty awesome, as was Tonks - although she was in few scenes as well. I loved Umbridge. In terms of acting, I thought this was Radcliff's best stint as Harry; it wasn't his fault that Sirius's death was handled so poorly, not allowing him to react much. Grunt was funny as Ron. I'd agree that Emma Watson was the weak link; her idea of acting seems to be furrowing the brow and turning all dialogue into breathless, overly dramatic yelling.
Overall I honestly thought GoF was better. Both films are flawed but at least GoF seemed to emit a sense of magic, life, and humor in the environments, characters, and music; speaking of music, the Potter theme shows up maybe once in OOTP and is replaced with a rather boring, forgettable score.
5.5/10
SS: 7/10
CoS: 6/10
PoA: 9/10
GoF: 7/10
OOTP: 5.5/10
