Watching the first again - children simply cannot act (with a few exceptions as in Sixth Sense).

You could see the Director saying "now look surprised... now look fightened... now say this... now say that..."

The children were quite ghastly then; they have all turned into decent actors now.

But through it all the incredibly clever plot and the wonderful idea of the kids growing older and having to cope with larger and larger problems won through.

I think the sixth book (Half Blood Prince) is the darkest and most interesting of the lot.
It will be interesting to see if it works on screen.

I love that first film. It's one of my all time favourites.

Wasn't impressed by the book.

It's good we're all different.

I must disagree about the outcome,but not about the acting abilities.
The first two films were very easy to follow,and were true to the books.
The third lost its way a bit,but was still ok.
The fourth was just a mismash trying to get too much in too little time.
The last one was a bit of an improvement,but was nowhere near as watchable as the first two.
Still I'm no expert,and only can offer my personnal thoughts.
None of the kids involved are really classy actors,but they do seem well choosen for their ability to act as normal kids.
At 11 there are not many great acting protoges around anyway,except perhaps for the states,and most of those have historically lost the plot for a while when reaching adulthood.

I think all the films are OK, but nothing more. Enjoyable to some extent, certainly. The fifth, and latest, is the closest to being a worthy film on its own merits.

To be fair, you can't expect Oscar winning performances from kids, and how often can literature we love (and I personally do love the Harry Potter books) ever live up to our expectations on the medium of film? That's a very elusive thing to achieve.