Personally, I don't see anything wrong with Columbus's adaptations. I'm not entirely sure, though, if he would have done as well with the later books, when they got longer and more mature. His book accuracy plan worked well for the two short books, but obviously that would have been impossible with the longer ones, and I wonder if he could have pulled off capturing the spirit while extremely condensing the plot. Prisoner of Azkaban did great with capturing the essence but screwed up a lot of important plot points. Goblet of Fire did great on both, with only a few missteps (Priori Incantatem). Like I've said before, I rarely cry at movies, but Cedric's death had me bawling the first two times I saw it. For that alone, I'd give it two thumbs up, but nearly everything else about it was perfect too.

The only thing I worry about now is how the movies deal with existing supporting characters, primarily the teachers. For the past two movies, you only see classroom scenes with the new teachers. And Kloves always seems to have trouble figuring out new ways to work McGonagall, Snape, Flitwick, etc. into the movie while keeping the plot going. I admit that it'd be hard. We've already seen with GOF that certain characters have had to be sacrificed in order to keep the plot going for the timespan of a movie.