Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Review
by Ronald O. Christian (ronc AT europa DOT com)November 26th, 2001
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
Daniel Radcliffe, John Cleese, Richard Harris, Alan Rickman US rating: PG
"How long is the movie?" a woman ahead of me asked the teller. "Two hours, forty minutes" was the response.
"Three Hours?" the woman exclaimed with theatrical surprise.
"Two hours forty minutes" repeated the teller patiently.
"Three hours?" the woman exclaimed again, a bit louder.
I tried to be helpful. "It's not three hours, more like two and two-thirds."
The woman glared at me, at the teller, and abruptly dropped out of line.
Well, that was weird.
But I guess one should expect weird things when standing in line for Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, (I refuse to use the dumbed-down US-only title) one of the most anticipated, hyped, and vilified films in years. (Second, this year, only to Lord of the Rings, which may have less hype but perhaps more anticipation and a greater degree of vilification from print-only fans.)
But a parent who does not know how many minutes are contained in an hour wasn't really the weirdness I was expecting. There were no fanatic kids wearing round glasses and pointy hats, and an utter absence of bible-thumpers, Wiccans objecting that the characters ride their brooms backwards, or members of the Stutterers Anti-Defamation League. The theater was quiet. Too quiet.
Oh some kid in the front row was shouting broken Latin at the screen in various parts of the movie, (perhaps the actors were using the wrong spells or something) but other than that, the fannish insanity I was led to expect utterly failed to appear.
The actual running time of Harry Potter is 2:32 including credits, or probably about 2:25 of movie. The teller was probably counting the two commercials and six trailers we had to sit through before the film started.
None of the showings on Saturday, November 17 were sold out. Our theater contained a smallish but intensely enthusiastic crowd. I don't know how things are going elsewhere, but four screens in the Hillsboro, Oregon multiplex seemed more then adequate.
The presentation:
I've only seen the film once, in one theater, and I can only speak to that. The print we saw was very grainy in parts, especially in the outdoor scenes. The soundtrack had an odd defect throughout the film, which sounded-ed-ed li-ike an audi-i-i-o file-e play-ayed on an-n overlo-lo-loaded comp-put-ter. I don't have any idea of the cause, but it was extremely distracting. Hopefully others will have a better experience.
The film: (mild spoilers ahead)
As I may have already mentioned, I'm more than a little annoyed with the US-only name change, but I was interested in how they were going to patch in "sorcerer's stone" for "philosopher's stone" in the film itself. Turns out there are very few places where the dialog needed to be duplicated, and about half of those were probably done with dubbing, as the speaker was not onscreen.
After considerable thought I'd have to rate Harry Potter 3 of 5 stars, for reasons I will explain below. I was tempted to rate it higher, but realized that this would have been more my reaction to the long string of turkeys I had to sit through since 1999 than any objective consideration of this particular movie.
Unless you've just arrived on this planet, you are already familiar with plot and characters, so I will not waste your time by summarizing here. If you *have* just arrived on the planet, Welcome. Try the produce.
The major questions I wanted to answer, as I sat back with my obligatory cup of flat soda, were (a) the accuracy of the adaption, and (b) how well the movie stood on it's own.
The latter may be difficult to objectively quantify. Since I've read the (rather dull) books, the movie contained no surprises, and deficiencies in the script tend to be mentally filled-in. On the other hand, wife and I had to take turns filling in gaps for our 7 year old daughter who had not yet read the books.
The adaptation is both faithful and flawed. Faithful in that practically every item that appears in the book appears also in the movie. Flawed in that almost every aspect of the story is cut short, simplified, causing the movie to be a Weekly Reader version of the book.
For instance, the flute which Harry uses to get past the Cerberus in the book makes only a cameo appearance in the movie. It's like the producers tried to stuff as much of the imagery of the novel into the film regardless of whether it made sense. So, if a fan asked "is the flute in there?", the literal answer would be "yes". It probably wouldn't occur to the fan to ask "was the flute actually used?"
The audience seemed to noticed this. My wife wanted to see more of the baby dragon, another pointless cameo. The kid in front of us was disappointed that there was so little time spent on Quiddich. (The film proceeds directly from Wood explaining the game, to Potter's first and only match, with no mention of any training in-between or of subsequent matches.)
There are several effects-laden set-pieces throughout the film, some (in my opinion) entirely unnecessary, others abbreviated to
pointlessness.
As I'm currently teaching chess to my seven-year-old, we were both interested in the giant chess game near the end. But after the initial moves, it became a confused jumble of special effects and shattering plaster, making the scene both too-short and rather tedious. I understand why the scene needed to be in, (it's a major development of Ron's character) but the film would have been better served by dropping the previous two traps as it did the successive two. We already know that Hermione is smart and Harry can ride a broomstick, and the "one signature trap per instructor" gag had already been destroyed.
Regrettably, the film retains the somewhat incomprehensible, deus-ex-machina ending of the book.
But for all that, the film is still worth watching. Assuming your print isn't grainy and your soundtrack clean, Harry Potter is well imagined and beautifully filmed. The film works extremely well as a companion to the book, less so as a stand-alone.
The actors:
It has been said that Daniel Radcliffe is rather lifeless as the title character. It's true. Radcliffe pretty much walks through the film, neither touching nor being touched by the events around him. But I'm not sure this is a valid criticism of the actor. We are continually reminded in the books that Harry Potter is an extremely reserved, introverted, rather dull child. He doesn't speak much, and when he does, it's "coolly" or "tonelessly". Radcliffe should not be discredited for playing the character accurately, as written.
In contrast, Rupert Grint as Ron and Emma Watson as Hermione play their parts with humor and energy. The contrast between dull Harry and his energetic friends makes the film that much more interesting to watch. Watson in particular, who appears to be making her film debut, bears watching.
One of the many frustrating things about the film is the extremely short screen time of John Cleese as Nearly Headless Nick. Cleese does what he can with his thirty seconds, but it's not sufficient. Why would you hire one of the most well-known comics in England and then give him no funny lines?
Richard Harris is adequate if a bit dull as Dumbledore, David Bradley (a name I did not recognize) is delightfully crazed as Filch, and Robbie Coltrane plays Hagrid to perfection. But of the adults, Alan Rickman takes the prize as the nasty, disagreeable, but ultimately heroic Snape. I only wish that Rickman had had more dialog. His speech during the first (and only) Potions class is almost worth the price of admission by itself. Rickman gets less screen time than he deserved.
In conclusion, the film holds together well enough to be followed by most grade-schoolers, and contains little that would disturb most modern-day children. The acting runs from adequate to remarkable, and if you don't mind too many time-related cuts, the film is generally a satisfying experience.
Like the book, the film's moral appears ostensibly to be that goodness and courage will win. But if you ignore the kids for just a moment, another, more important moral emerges.
Near the end, the villain says, "there is no good or evil, only power", a chilling reflection, I submit, of the growing moral ambivalence of our society. But the most interesting adult, Snape, gives us another angle: "What you are is what you do". Malevolent, caustic, deliberately unpleasant, Snape nevertheless does the right things when necessary, even saving the life of someone he detests, simply because it is the right thing to do. Snape reminds us that our deeds define us more than our thoughts, emotions or verbal prostrations could ever do. It's worth remembering.
Ron
www.europa.com/~ronc
"If UN peacekeeping had been involved during the US civil war, it'd still be going on today."
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