Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)

It’s unlikely that many people in Britain today haven’t heard of J.K.Rowling’s phenomenally successful children’s fantasy books about a boy at a school for wizards, even if some of them probably have no intention of reading them. With so many books sold, a conversion into a film seemed an inevitable choice and in late 2001 it duly arrived.

The basic story is simple - a young orphaned boy named Harry Potter (Daniel Ratcliffe) is treated badly by his ludicrously cruel foster parents until he gets and opportunity to go to the famed Hogwarts school of magic and wizardry to learn to become a wizard. It turns out that Harry’s parents were killed by an evil wizard named Voldemort and the main plot of the book concerns Harry’s efforts to stop the despicable Voldemort getting his hands on the legendary Philosopher’s Stone (or, for American audiences the not-so-legendary Sorcerer's Stone). This might seem like a daunting challenge for an 11-year old boy but fortunately he makes a couple of good friends in the dependable Ron Weasely and the bossy Hermione (both played by previously unknown child actors). He also doesn’t have to strain himself too much trying to find out the details of Voldemort’s plot as he can seemingly find out all the secrets he need from giant Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) who in a piece of rather lazy plotting will accidentally tell any of Hogwart’s deepest secrets any time the plot needs to progress.

That’s the essence of the plot, although this being a children’s film there are plenty of magic mirrors, vicious trolls (constructed of rather poor CGI), moving paintings and living chess-sets. The various magical details are often quite well portrayed and interesting to look at but do tend to distract from the plot, although considering the weakness of the plot that’s possibly no bad thing.

The film trundles along pleasantly enough, with a few good ideas and even the odd reasonably exciting action scene until the anti-climatically easy ending. By the far the worst bit of the film is the early section of the film where Harry’s foster parents are crudely portrayed as being nasty and unpleasant individuals who try and prevent Harry from following his career as a wizard. This bit is presumably included to make the child audience sympathise with Harry early on, but it’s lack of subtlety is likely to irritate adult audiences.

The child actors perform competently enough, but it’s the Hogwarts teachers that provide the best acting featuring a succession of respected British actors including Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Ian Hart, Jon Hurt, Warwick Davis, John Cleese and Alan Rickman. They all perform well, although most of them have little screen time, Alan Rickman in particular is brilliantly villainous-looking as the ambitious Professor Snape.

The special effects are rather variable, there are some impressive moments but also some extremely unconvincing CGI at times. The music is nice enough, although John Williams’ score is a bit repetitive. The direction from Chris Columbus (best known for the lamentable Home Alone series) is competent but uninspired.

In short, this is an entertaining film for children that is good enough that adult’s shouldn’t object to watching it too much but it’s nothing special and nowhere near as good as 2001's other big fantasy adaptation “The Lord of the Rings”.

Rating : 6 / 10

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All content ©2003 William Marnoch.

Comments? Agree/Disagree with the Reviews? Suggestions? Random Ramblings? Whatever you might want to say, feel free to e-mail me at william@wmarnoch.freeserve.co.uk .