The good's good, the bad's bad

Rating: 1/10 (8 November 2002)

WARNING: Possible spoilers towards the end
Not since Blair Witch II has there been a film in which the acting and directing was so sorely lacking. Chris Columbus seems to have a career littered with mediocre movies - Home Alone, Home Alone II, Bicentennial Man. That Bicentennial Man was such a mangled version of Isaac Asimov's novel might suggest that he cannot properly translate books to films;
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was mostly saved by the talents of seasoned actors such as Robbie Coltrane (the lumbering Hagrid), Richard Griffiths (the detestable uncle Vernon), Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, John Cleese and the outstanding Alan Rickman. The casting for these parts was beyond reproach (except Richard Harris, not the perfect dumbledore in my opinion -- however he delivered a sterling performance anyway).
Although the actors and actresses reprised their roles flawlessly (Miriam Margolyes in particular delivered an excellent, though short, performance), this was not enough to redeem this film in light of the dull, monotonous acting by Emma Watson as Hermione (there were points in this film where one could really feel her reaming off the lines from the script, not putting feeling into her performance). Daniel Radcliffe's performance was better, but by no means up to the standard one would expect.
When I watched Sorcerer's Stone I wondered about the casting of Rupert Grint as Ron. This film made my mind up. He looks the part, but as soon as he opens his mouth he is wrong. In some of the more "frightening" scenes of the film he was squealing like a suckling pig - these destroyed any atmosphere Columbus had managed to scrape together. There's something about hearing the missing link between a piglet and a human in Dolby 6.1 Surround Sound that distresses me.
While on the issue of the sound, I think it was very overdone -- in the Quidditch match, for instance, when the bludger is following harry, the sound of it crashing through things sounded more like a cannon being fired than some wood being broken); in the scenes with the giant spiders (where a silent padding sound would have built more atmosphere) the sound was more like spiders wearing steel clogs walking across glass. Either that or they were chopsticks on legs.
While talking about the sound, the (presumably computer generated) fire in the torches on the outside of Hogwarts at the end just didn't feel real -- more like silk being blown in a stream of air.
This film, for all its failings, isn't the worst film you could waste your time watching (xXx comes to mind...). If you read the book and had a vivid picture of what things should be like I'd really advise against it, though. If you haven't read the book, the quality of the good acting is really good (although, conversely, the bad acting is REALLY bad), so if you can bear it, you'll be rewarded by the performances of Miriam Margolyes, Alan Rickman and others. Unfortunately, Richard Griffiths (uncle Vernon) just doesn't have enough to work with in order to give as good a performance as he did in the previous film.