[Ghoulish Delight]

I liked the movie, didn't love it. I thought they sacrificed a lot of the urgency and pace of the book in favor of cramming it all into one or two climactic scenes. The sense of danger as they raced from the Beavers' place to the stone was so integral to the book, and that was removed.

Overall the effects were great, especially a lot of the detail stuff. But it seems that while they focused really well on making the close-up character effects top notch, they got lazy with some of the larger scenic stuff. I thought a lot of the scenes with many CG characters in one shot were sloppy and cartoony. Plus there were a couple close-ups of the kids with really poor digital backgrounds behind them. That lack of dedication to the whole digital picture kinda disctracted me.

These flaws weren't enough for me to not enjoy the movie. Overall, it was very well done. But they will keep me from considering it a "great" movie. It was a very good movie.