Certainly not an academy award contender but it makes no pretense of being one. It is an entertaining movie, even for an adult although children will probably be more interested.
Contrary to some reviewers, my husband and I were not disappointed. As the books got longer it became ever more difficult to condense all the plots and subplots into a movie of reasonable length. Unless each book was done as a mini-series I don't see how all the action, plots, etc. could be left in. Difficult choices had to be made about omissions. While I would have liked to have seen some more of the book show up in the movie as well,a good job was done in including the needed portions of the book. My husband and I would also disagree that it was too comedic. There were funny moments, but the angst of teenagers, stress and danger were effectively conveyed.