Aaaack! I missed a thread on Serenity! I love Firefly, no doubt about it. I loved the movie too, but I think it was just missing a little bit of the magic that the series had. As someone else said, perhaps it was because they were aiming too big with the plot. Perhaps it was a lot of things. Little things like color schemes on the ship, the suspenders being different, little items that just seemed to be trying hard to be "sci-fi" rather than practical items that could even exist in todays world, or times gone by. Things like the Captain's suspenders. Also, Khalee needed to eat a few more cheeseburgers before they started filming. Now don't get me wrong. She's an attractive girl, no doubt about it, but she just didn't seem right. Also it seemed like the hair and makeup crew weren't briefed on the look of Firefly, because it appeared to me as though all the ladies had just been to a salon or something. Oh, well.
OK, because I got nabbed for this a while ago. If you haven't seen the movie yet, and any of the following my even slightly have the potential to count as a spoiler:
SPOILER... SPOILER... SPOILER ALERT!!!
Also, it seemed like they changed a few things from the series, like when the Captain tells Simon that he's not a part of the crew, but that had all been covered in several episodes of Firefly (as well as what would happen to Jane if he went behind the Captain's back and tried to turn in Simon and River so why was he going after River to take her for a little "shuttle ride"?). I think they could totally have told the overall story just as well if they had gone with what had come before rather than changing the behaviours of the folks onboard Serenity.
So it was a bunch of little things that stole some of the shine, but overall it was a great movie. Good enough that I went to see it twice at full price.