I read these books a while back and really liked them. I never fell in love with them like a fanboy, but I appreciated the depth of characters and mature content usually absent in "children's books." Those are almost precisely the things this movie lacked. It was a children's movie without the adult themes and complex characters. And yet somehow it managed to stay too faithful to the book. There was no adaptation involved; instead it compacted every single important event in the book and shoved it into this movie, which made everything seem forced and outright ridiculous. Moreover, the world they imagined was so different from what I had imagined. It was futuristic with blue balls of energy powering everything. What is that? When I read the book I imagined it was just London in present day. Another qualm is the CGI. I hated it. Filmmakers depend on it too much; it seems as if they don't even shoot anything anymore. It's just not believable.But to be fair, I did find myself enjoying it a lot. The bear fight scene was awesome, and there were some parts that were really exciting. There's nothing really terrible about the movie, just frustrating. It's irritating when you see good material treated sloppily. Don't go out and see it if you can avoid it. Save yourself a whole lot of ire and just read (or re-read) the books.
IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0385752/