I have not and have no intention of reading the books- nothing against them, they just aren't my cup o'tea. I hesitated seeing this film not because of no interest in those books- but because of the director- I have found his films to be trite and cheap and very formula- straight from the Speilberg school of "once I've made my first ba-zillion I can sell out and never have to be creative again". This film has good camera work. It has current state effects. It has a pace akin to running a 24fps film at 1000fps. It's shallow- it asks you to buy into all of it without explanation. There's a fakeness to it leaving me feeling like I had molten Saran-wrap poured over me. I don't care about the characters because they were simply place-holders- no personalities. Harry is so two-dimensional as to make a sheet of paper more intriguing. Perhaps the "genre" just doesn't appeal here. Fans (and most people are either a fan or not- no "in-betweens") ballyhoo this film with that glazed-eye look of cult religionists. Yuck.
