DISCLAIMER: I read all of the books before I saw the movie.
I saw this movie with a friend who had not read the books nor knew much about the story. He really liked the movie and felt it was a great value for his money and now wants to read the books. I was actually disappointed. I knew it would be hard to really encapsulate the good parts of the book because most of it is expository by internal monologue and a great lot of the first half is just meeting the characters and discovering the world. The movie, however, just tossed the characters at you and dumped you in the world. The only real feeling I got for a relationship was Jake and his grandfather. I felt no connection between him and anyone else, including his father. So that was weird. Also, a few things that were supposed to be a slow reveal from teh book were in fact just plopped into your lap fairly early in the movie. There was no dwelling on the strangeness of it all, no lingering on the fantastical nature of this secret world, not time to be amazed. Just here ya go, arent’ they peculiar? Moving right along… About halfway through the movie, things take a different turn with the only possible explanation being that the movie (unlike the book) needs a solid ending. Overall, I think Tim Burton shouldn’t have been the director for this adaptation. It was whimsical but not amusing, dark but not grim, fanciful but not fantastic. The effects were cool but there were actually not a lot of them. If they were so determined to have Burton, I wish he had taken the story more seriously. It was like Edward Scissorhands without any of the character pathos.