BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Gonçalo Abrantes Besides it looking cheap, all the scenes in Portugal are terrible. There is not even one Portuguese actor. Either they have an Italian or Spanish accent. Sometimes they even use these languages, which I find outrageous. There are a lot of brilliant Portuguese actors they could have chosen. Besides the language, there is Spanish music in the scenes, and Brazilian Portuguese signs in the street, and even there they couldn't get the words/grammar right. If they wanted to depict a country or culture, they should have at least do some research and have someone advising on what is right or wrong.I wonder what JK thinks of this movie. Shameful, really.

Deebee Daydreamer (deebeeinthesky) As I saw 'Magic Beyond Words' advertised as the story of J. K. Rowling's life before Hogwarts; I was disappointed to see the majority of the film depicting the publication and subsequent impact of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'. All of the film pre-Potter was hurried passed at a clumsy pace and trips over itself to get to the "riches" part of her story.Aside from that, most of the film was decent, very well acted - for the most part - and became very touching in places, about as much as you'd expect from an average made-for-TV biopic. I give it an overall 5/10 for full presentation.

alfiethompson123 As a former Wyedean student I'm not sure where to even start... The entire film is just shockingly researched from start to finish. Any fact finding has evidently been done by a couple of researchers sat at their office desks in America typing associated words into Wikipedia. As a former student of Wyedean, I can tell you now that the school is absolutely nothing like it is portrayed in the film. The film makers seem to have somehow got the idea that Hogwarts would be based upon Wyedean regarding looks, but in seven years of education there I do not once recall coming across any of the high ceilinged corridors or ornate beams pictured in the film. There were other numerous factual inaccuracies about England in general, such as the sweet trolley on the train, and the fact that Rowling is advised to hire an 'attorney', which is frankly a mistake an 11 year old wouldn't make. Perhaps the most frustrating moment in the entire film, for me certainly, was the line 'Being head girl at Wyedean just means least likely to go to jail', which was not only astonishingly inaccurate and very untrue, but downright insulting to the school and its staff and pupils.This is the point where I say 'so forget the inaccuracies, just watch it, it's a good Sunday afternoon trash film to pass the time', but I'm not going to, because its terrible even as that. I have no idea how this film ever made it onto any kind of screen.

GD Cugham This made for television feature caught and held the attention one New Year afternoon for all the wrong reasons. A dramatisation of how Joanne Rowling discovered the idea for Harry Potter then became JK and rose to international fame is filmed like a particularly cheap perfume ad. The director's apparent obsession with flashes of cleavage aside - at times you think you are watching the feature through dirty-old-man-on-tube Cam - the main actor has been cast for her resemblance to Rowling and little else. The director again seems to be at fault for not allowing his star to re-dub her lines but this is perhaps a trait of this rushed-to-shop production. The whole early section, juggling a parental death with Rowling's teaching experience in Portugal, affair with a Latin lover and subsequent pregnancy, makes the Mediterranean hi jinx of 'Mamma Mia' look like Chekov. When Rowling returns to the UK with her daughter the real comedy ensues as the script hangs around the rumours and misdirection Rowling fed press junkets regarding her formative time writing Potter while placing the action in an Edinburgh that makes Diagon Alley look grittily realistic. Canadianisms pervade the whole telling of this section. A single mother doesn't receive "assistance" in Scotland as the film insists, but 'benefits". Rowling's experience as a teacher in Leith Academy is grimly unresearched, with what looks like a Kindergarten in Hobbiton being her workplace. What in real Edinburgh is called "interval" or 'playtime' is erroneously referred to as "recess' by the Mcgonagle-like Headmistress.Even by TV movie standards this is cynical stuff. The creative process is explored in clichéd montage, at once displaying Rowling as a lucky, remotely eloquent Bimbo - her child and relationship with her is laughably never believable - while never exploring the fact that Rowling lightly thieved from Dahl, Tolkein, Rattigan and Lewis in her development of the bespectacled Potter.There are some that may say this insanely chocolate-box representation of Rowling's life and Britain is all she deserves for a biopic. Her vision of Hogwarts and intrinsic social classes in her novels is adolescent in its reflection of UK life and also posits an ideal school system that is rare in the UK and patrician and exclusive where it does exist.That aside, this is camp Lambrini party viewing, provoking unintended laughs and hilarity, especially if you live in the UK. Watchable in that vein!