**UPDATED***It's here - Harry Potter - THE MOVIE!!!! - **NEW INFO** (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (DVD))

Member Name: indychick_uk

Product:	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (DVD)
Date:	11/11/01 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's Harry Potter!, very true to the book, the cast

Disadvantages: Weak plot, Not magical enough, Very long

Yes, it’s finally here, the moment that 10 year olds up and down the country have been waiting for…Harry Potter The Movie has arrived.

I have to tell you straight away that I am NOT a Harry Potter fan, I haven’t read any of the books and have not been eaten up with anticipation for the past year waiting for this film. I feel like as though I have, due to the fact that my husband has read all of the books, and insists on reading passages out to me whilst he reads. I should point out here that we do not have any children so he bought these books purely for his own consumption. He has also because he has been driving me mad by picking up every link to Harry Potter on tv, the internet and in magazines. He keeps looking in toy shops for Harry Potter merchandise “for his nephew” and for the past several months has been asking on a regular basis “Can we go? Can we? Pleeeeease!”

Yes, it’s true, all men refuse to get past the age of 8.

So, last week I was informed by e-mail that we were going to a special preview screening of the film in the company of two of his friends from work. Great, I thought, I feel like the responsible adult having to accompany three boys to the cinema. No, you can’t have ice-cream AND popcorn, choose on or the other. If you don’t start behaving right now we’re going home and NOBODY is seeing the film…..

It was therefore with less a sense of excitement and more a sense of foreboding that I set off for our local picture palace. But, before I tell you what the experience was like here are the boring details –

Cast

The cast of Harry Potter, the adult cast anyway, reads like a who’s who of British acting –

Richard Harris - Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts
Maggie Smith - Professor McGonagall, deputy headmistress of Hogwarts
Alan Rickman - Professor Snape, professor of potions
Ian Ha
rt - Professor Quirrel, Defence against the Dark Arts teacher
Robbie Coltrane - Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds
Richard Griffiths - Vernon Dursley, Harry’s uncle

The adult cast ably supports the young cast members –

Daniel Radcliffe - Harry Potter, our eponymous hero
Emma Watson - Hermione Granger, girly swot and friend of Harry
Rupert Grint - Ron Weasley, Harry’s friend
Tom Felton - Draco Malfoy, Harry’s archenemy

Story

For anyone who, like me, hasn’t read the book, or has been living in a cave in Outer Mongolia for the past few years, the story briefly is this.

Harry Potter is an orphan. He has been raised by his Uncle Vernon, & Aunt Petunia, who force him to live in the cupboard under the stairs and tell him nothing about his parents, except that they were killed in a car crash. On his 11th birthday the house is deluged by letters, addressed to Harry, but his Uncle destroys them all. Finally, Harry receives a visit from Hagrid the Giant and he discovers he is not just a “normal” boy but is in fact the son of wizards and he has been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizadry. The story then follows Harry’s first year at Hogwarts with his friends Hermione and Ron as he learns not only the arts of wizadry but also the truth about his parents.

The Film

So what of the film? Did I enjoy it?

Well, yes I did. However, it was not as magical or full of wonder as it could have been. There were some wonderful moments – when Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley and the Quidditch game in particular – but overall it just seemed a bit, well, ordinary.

Of the cast, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid the Giant towered over everyone both literally and figuratively! Robbie Coltrane is a big man and they somehow made him seem about 8 foot tall and absolutely huge. Hagrid has some of the best scenes and bes
t lines in the film and is probably the most loveable character.

Alan Rickman as Snape and Zoe Wannamaker as Madam Hooch are both fantastic but they are rather in the background. Alan Rickman plays Snape in the same arrogant and sneering manner as he played the Sheriff of Nottingham and oozes contempt as only he can. Zoe Wannamaker is the sort of gym mistress that most men fantasise about.

Richard Harris and Maggie Smith are both good but underused. Richard Harris is the perfect Wizard, just what you always imagined a wizard to be and his scenes with Harry are good but few and far between.

Of the children, Harry is very well played but I think Rupert Grant as Ron Weasley was probably my favourite.

The sense of atmosphere in the film owes a lot to a brilliant John Williams score (there is a lot of music in this film) and not a huge amount to sets and special effects. There are some great effects, the Quidditch game being the notable scene, and some of the school sets, the dining room and the staircases, are very well done but on the whole the scenes are on location in what could be any ordinary school.

The overriding problem that the film has is that there is no strong story, the film is very piecemeal with lots of scene-setting, introduction of characters and laying the ground for the following books/films. It suffers from this in the same way that The Phantom Menace did. Making a 2 and a half hour movie from the basic story of a little boy discovering he's actually a wizard is stretching things.

Of the four of us who went to watch this film, two had read the books and two hadn’t and I think the two of us who hadn’t maybe enjoyed it slightly more as we had no expectations. My husband, who has been anticipating this for months, admitted to being slightly disappointed. He felt they could have made it much more magical and he wasn’t impressed with the actors playing the three children. He di
d say that it was very true to the book although, inevitably, a lot was missed out, and in particular the character of Peeves the Poltergeist was nowhere to be seen.

However, on balance, it’s a good film – not a great film but a good film. Kids are going to love it even though, at 2 and a half hours, it’s very long for them to sit through. As an adult I was hoping to be taken back to childhood with a story of magic and wonder, akin to the Narnia series on BBC some years ago or the films “Hook” and “Never Ending Story” instead I got an adventure set in a boarding school with a bit of magic thrown in but maybe I expected too much from what is, after all, a children’s film.

13-11-01 UPDATE

Since going to see this film and writing this review my husband and I (that made me sound like a bad impression of the Queen didn't it??) have found out a vital piece of information regarding this film, which may go some way to explaining why it seemed very slow in places. It also explains the complete absence of Peeves the Poltergeist and the fleeting glimpse of Nearly Headless Nick.

The story is that when the film was being edited the director, Chris Colombus, was so appalled by the dreadful quality of the ghost effects that he cut them all and fired the Computer Graphics team.

Where there were sections of the film with no action and no story there should have been the hilarious scenes involving Peeves & Nearly Headless Nick.

Rumour is that a second version will be released in the future with all the ghost effects once they've been redone.

So there!!!

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