The greatest movie ever!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I was very excited to hear this movie existed. I wanted to introduce my partner to Discworld and this seemed an exciting way to do so. Hogfather is a great book, so we decided to watch the movie.All I can say is... don't do this. While the movie is nicely executed visually and rather faithfully follows the story of the book, it also has some serious flaws. Visually, it leans (too) heavily on famous examples such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. The music seems composed by Danny Elfman for A Nightmare Before Christmas. Pacing-wise, it clearly suffers from being 3 hours long. From the sluggishly delivered introduction narration to the dialogs to the visual scenes -- everything seems to play in a universe where time is stretched by a factor two. Content-wise, it focuses strongly on the dramatic and substantially downplays the fun in the book. Finally, all actors seem keen on speaking English as incomprehensibly as possible.All in all, we stopped watching after the first half. And we're the audience that probably would love this movie most. I'm a major fan of the Discworld novels; she's a major fan of aforementioned books-turned-into-movies, loves to read, loves endearing and humorous stories as well as exciting whodunits, and speaks English natively.We've read that the other two movies (Going Postal mostly, but also The Colour of Magic) are much better. We'll try one of these. But ultimately I think the best way to introduce her to Discworld is by giving her a Discworld book.READ THEM! THEY'RE FANTASTIC!

The casting was hit and miss and miss some more. I was very pleased to find Marc Warren taking on the role of Teatime, however his/the director's interpretation of the character was much too ridiculous. I get it, he's a psychopath, but it should have been played dry and without the annoying accent. The children should have been cuter (they came off as bullies), and Susan was bland.It seems like the script couldn't make up it's mind about how close it should have followed the book. To Terry Pratchet fans it all made sense, but I could easily see a newcomer getting seriously bored and confused. Even "The Color (or Colour) of Magic" had the since to omit a few things to keep the story moving, in spite of the rest of it's flaws.The dialogue should have been faster, but it was dragged out to near torture, ruining most of the humor. This film falls to the dregs of novel adaptations (keep company by "Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight" and "Timeline"). I can see how fans might get carried away with the memory of the book, but honestly, this is a MAJOR disappointment. Sorry.

being a low budged production i didn't really expect too much of this one, but it manages to create the discworld with many many well known characters directly before your eyes the cast is great - couldn't imagine better actors for it making it about 3 hours was a good decision, this way the story feels really like the book i liked the book (i like most of Pratchett's books) and i love the movie the only weak point are some special effects, but i really do not care about this - this is a great production, hope we will see more soon --- Susan is reading the fairy tale "Jack and the beanstalk" to children] And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy any more. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.

The Hogfather is, simply put, a well produced adaptation of Terry Pratchett's book of the same title. It's a fine Christmas tale, and contains several important lessons about being human.The story is simple - Hogswatch, a night similar to Christmas, is under assault by... I won't explain, but it's a similar concept to many Christmas films. Several characters end up trying to save Christmas (and, of course, the entire world) in fantastical places. Along the way there are wizards, mythical creatures, thieves and scoundrels and a truly fair maiden.The characters in this film were wonderful, although they were not as well-acted as I'd have liked. Or, more correctly, they were not as *vibrant* as i'd have liked. Characters in British film and TV are often extremely understated as compared to those in American productions, and I, an American, was left vaguely wanting. The wizards, especially, were rather ineptly acted, and frankly, it detracted from the film. With better acting, I would have added a star.Also, this was a made-for-TV production by the BBC. As such, the production values are exceedingly high in areas such as set and terribly low in others (Death's face being the most glaring example). The series was also far too long to make it regular Christmas fare, which is sad, because a two hour series could have led to a yearly airing.In any case, it was a worthwhile watch, and the ending is very well done. I give this film 8 out of 10 stars. Enjoy it. And Happy Hogswatch.