Here's what went wrong. (Spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (30 January 2002)

This is a fairly faithful translation of the novel into a well filmed movie. As such it deserves full credit.
A lot of people were disappointed by this movie for various reasons. The little details were omitted, for one. Uncle Vernon and the Dursleys were not as terrible as in the book which subtracted from the urgency behind Harry's need to fit in at the strange school and his need to avoid being expelled and, consequently, his courage in defying Draco Malfoy and other "established" students, for another.
But the thing that kept the movie for soaring like the novel is the absence of the "Huckleberry Finn Moment". That's the moment when Huckleberry makes the transition from boy to man with the words "All right then! I'll *go* to Hell!" That moment is also in the original novel of this Harry Potter story, when Harry gives his reasons why he must risk expulsion *and* danger to his life and go after the Philosopher's Stone. That inspired speech is conspicuously missing from this movie version.
You might say that what went wrong is the absence of emotional tension. In the book Harry, Ron and Hermione are all walking an emotional tightrope for different reasons. The book was a stage where childhood trauma meets Greek Drama with lots of enchanting hocus pocus thrown in between. In the movie, the hocus pocus was well represented, the Greek Drama was subdued and the childhood trauma was nearly absent.
I hope that Chris Columbus, or whoever will direct the next installation, will take the advice of all the disappointed viewers who posted here because a lot of excellent points are made about what went wrong. I hope he will ask himself why stories of orphans have continued to capture our imaginations over the centuries even though so few of us are actually orphans.
Overall, I give this movie a fair seven out of ten. But it could have been better.