Went to see the Harry Potter movie after work. I wasn't really expecting to love it, so it wasn't a let-down or anything- but it is a bit like watching a superbly entertaining 2 1/2 hour Saturday morning cartoon... I'm glad I saw it on a big screen. I wish I'd gone to see it with kids. My inner 10 year old loved it, despite my grown-up disatisfaction.
Mostly the movie made me want to read the books- the movie feels empty, and I'll bet the books are a lot darker and more suspenseful.
It has all the classic elements of a great kid's story- sweet, likable kid (don't we all want to be likable, even when we're not?), with horrible, awful family, learns of real family or special abilities, or finds some other means of escape- Roald Dahl used this stuff an awful lot (James and the Giant Peach, Matilda), as well as half the other books I read as a kid. Robin McKinley was one of my favorite authors, and I still don't see her books very often; it's a crime. "The Blue Sword" and "The Hero and the Crown" were so great, and "The Outlaws of Sherwood" is a very engaging retelling of "Robin Hood." Any kind of fairy tale-type story has always been my favorite. The Philip Pullman trilogy, "His Dark Materials" (very, very silly name) was pretty great, although he got really bogged down toward the end of the third one...