I don’t often admit things like this, but I did just drag my friends to the opening midnight showing of Harry Potter 4. In fairness, I didn’t exactly have to drag them. They all came willingly enough, even though I’m the only one who is regularly awake at such obscene hours of the moring. But we were all curious about what the next HP installment would look like, and we wanted to see it before everyone else told us about it. So of course we had to go to the first showing humanly possibly. And let me tell you, we were not the only folks with this idea. I think the movie was showing on about 10 screens simultaneously. The cab-drivers in the city didn’t know what hit them when the swarm of fans descended upon downtown at 3 am when the movie let out. If nothing else, just being witness to the scores of Gryffindor-color-clad Harry Potter fans take over an entire movie theater for a night was worth it.

The movie, sadly, was not. I won’t say much about it now, just to humor you silly people who didn’t rush out to see it right away. But I will say that I thought they sold out all the interesting parts of the book for some flashy cgi scence and cute repartee. I realize that the filmmakers faced quite a challenge in trying to condense Rowling’s book into a movie of reasonable length, but in my opinion they cut out almost all the parts that make the series a coherent whole. The subplots, the backstories, the ominousness are either missing or trivialized. What’s left is something that looks like The Wonder Years meets Spy Kids 3-D.

As always, I seem to be of the minority opinion. Ratings on rottentomatoes are pretty much through the roof (although there is one review that I agree with. I’ll be interested to see if HP4 shows up on Kkak’s Picks any time soon. Until then, I’ll just have to wonder if it is I or the rest of the world who has a black, black soul.