HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (2001)  **1/2

Reviewed 11/17/01

Not since STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE has a movie arrived with as much anticipation as HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE.  Predicated on the tremendous success of the children’s books by J.K. Rowling, HARRY POTTER is a goldmine for a movie franchise and Warner Bros. wasn’t about to gamble it away with a strong-minded auteurist filmmaker like Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam they could not control (not that Burton is any paragon of quality assurance as PLANET OF THE APES pointedly demonstrates); so Chris Columbus got the job.  Under Columbus, HARRY POTTER feels most definitely restrained, restrained to the point of being stifled.

In a movie like this, one needs to get a sense in the filmmaking style that someone somewhere, if not the filmmakers themselves, is having some fun.  A quick look at something like TRAINSPOTTING, O BROTHER, WHERE ARE THOU?, or the just-released DONNIE DARKO shows how style can convey genuine passion and enthusiasm to the audience.  HARRY POTTER is matter-of-fact presentation of the fantastical when the presentation itself needs to be fantastic.  Columbus’ direction not only lacks pizzazz but is sometimes downright lazy.  Often the camera framing fails to fill up the widescreen with details, and we have great expanses of wasted empty space as if the movie were shot for television.  HARRY POTTER feels carefully molded, controlled, safe.  Two and a half hours of this makes the movie feel like twice that length.

It is not helped by the film having little to no buildup, which is partly the fault of the book.  The first two-thirds is too heavily geared toward setting the scene, and only in the final third does the plot get going with even the slightest suspense.   For the few dozen people who have not read the books or heard the story, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is the child of wizard parents and orphaned by the monstrously powerful and evil Lord Voldemort.  Harry is the only person to ever survive Voldemort’s wrath and so he is a legend among the magical community which hides among the mostly oblivious Muggles (non-magical people) of the world.  At age 11, Harry is whisked away from his appalling aunt, uncle, and cousin (with whiffs of Cinderella) by Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) to Hogwarts, a school of wizardry headmastered by Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris).  On the way by train, Harry makes friends with easily-impressed Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and studious know-it-all Hermione Granger (Emma Watson).  At Hogwarts, Harry starts to warrant his reputation by becoming a star in Quidditch, the rugby/hockey-like sport played on flying broomsticks.  When someone makes his broomstick go haywire mid-game and later unleashes a troll in the Hogwarts’ dungeon, Harry and gang know all is not right and set about investigating.

The movie presumes the viewer has read the book and does not mention such a key motivation as Harry having contributed to Voldemort’s current debilitating condition and also does not tie up the loose end of who gives Harry a cloak of invisibility (in the book, it is Dumbledore).  (Am I the only one who thinks the game of Quidditch makes no sense.  If the seeker essentially wins the game, then what is all the fuss over what the rest of the team does?)

HARRY POTTER is aided by lush production design and some nice special effects, though they still seem overpriced in a movie with a $120 million price tag.  The lively wizard street Diagon Alley and the enormous medieval castle that is the Hogwarts School come closest to providing the film with a sense of wonder that is lacking in Columbus’ cartoonish yet flat direction.  Still, everything looks like it was shot on a soundstage and has that too-clean movie appearance.  Good performances abound with Robbie Coltrane at the forefront, Richard Harris getting by despite some awful dialogue, and Maggie Smith charming as usual.  Among the children, Rupert Grint comes off best as Ron with his gleefulness unpretentiousness and his funny verbal volleying with Hermoine.  Emma Watson is too careful in her annunciation of lines but supplies Hermione with the right amount of humor and pride.  Actually, Daniel Radcliffe is the most problematic.  Despite having a great look for Harry, he emotes little and has little range when he does.

HARRY POTTER will not disappoint those who simply want a visual translation of the book, but a movie about magic that is not magical is not going to get others very enthused.