Emma Thompson was hilarious. Simply brilliant.
The girl sitting next to me in the theatre kept loudly exclaiming that she thought Harry, Ron, and Draco are all suddenly 'hot'. She seemed particularly taken with Draco.
I wouldn't call it darker. It was definitely less 'scary' than the first two. A 'beautiful' movie. Very fluid. Lots left out from the book (they didn't even bother mentioning that a certain character was an animagus, let alone explaining Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs). Several random 'gags' added for no apparent reason.
I find the biggest weakness in it to be that it is not as much a "stand-alone" movie as the first two. It's kinda like how Cliff's Notes make an excellent supplement to classic books, but you miss a lot of details if you ONLY read Cliff's Notes. Same with this. I think that it would be very difficult to truly understand this movie without having read the book, but it's a nice multimedia addition to help less creative readers to visualize.
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