Kim Westgarth This is an awful movie. Truly badly done. The accents are horrific and the scenery is stock shots. Getty images probably made a fortune off this one. The terminology is all wrong. The moment I saw the actual scenery I knew it was filmed in BC. You would think that Canadian actors could pull off a credible British accent. Poppy Montgomery shocks me as she is an Aussie. Surely she could at least fake a British accent. This was SUCH a disappointment. I'll bet J.K. Rowling cringed when this is brought up. No wonder its UNauthorized. Phew, what a stinker.

kateruggles-114-54 I can only concur with the comments made previously about the glaring misrepresentations of British life and culture in this film. I appreciate that biopics are an interpretation of a person's life, but while that person is still alive some efforts should at least be made to show their nation's culture with some semblance of authenticity. In the scene in secondary school Jo calls her teacher 'professor'. I am only 2 years younger than Jo Rowling and teachers were never called that, they were either 'sir' or 'miss' or called by their full surname with appropriate title, e.g. 'Dr/Mr/Mrs/Ms So-and-so'. The benefits office (benefits, not 'assistance') in the film was unfeasibly clean and tidy, I was a single mother at about the same time and dole (benefits) offices were always filthy, depressing places devoid of hope, and littered with cigarette butts and stinking of smoke, BO and despair. And the benefits officers never dressed like the Queen as the one in this film did. And your benefits book came in the post, it was not just miraculously handed over to you (although I appreciate that this would be done in the film for efficiency of time). But the biggest and most epic of fails was the line uttered by Jo's father when she failed to get into Oxford University and he said it was because she went to a public school. That would be STATE school. A public school in the UK is a fee-paying independent school, over 50% of students at Oxford and Cambridge universities attended public school, they are considered the privileged elite, not what Jo's dad was referring to which is the free public- funded schools paid for by taxation which something like 93% of British children attend. Aside from all that, it was a dreadful film. All the foreshadowing was really obvious and patronising. If you're going to make a film about a living person pay more attention to the cultural specificities. I'd gladly be a consultant in these matters. Kate the celluloid pedant xx

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.

thompson-62 This film is so lazy, the research is 100% Wikipedia and is laugh out loud funny for its inaccurate portrayal of Rowling's village (Tutshill), the School and, best of all - the utterly weird thing about the candy trolley on the train.....a hurricane of laughter that one.If you are going to watch a film, try one that has been researched by adults and not 4th grade students (maybe that is too generous), employ researchers that go a little beyond the www, maybe actually take a trip to the places they portray, maybe interview a few people.Don't waste your time with this film, just read Rowling's entry on Wikipedia....its about as insightful as the film.Errors - Her school is presented as an old manor house - in fact its a modern purpose built school. - The School is a high achieving school with several students a year going on to Oxford or Cambridge, and Rowling herself went on to study at a good University - hardly the trash can she describes. - Trains in the UK do not - never have - and never will have sweet trolleys....with or without tripe sweets (what?).and they are the only ones I know about..........what a waste of time and money.