Lord of the Stone!

Rating: 10/10 (17 June 2002)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released in close proximity to the great Lord of the Rings, and while this has happened many times before with the general result that one of the two films is widely, although not always correctly, considered inferior to the other (Independence Day and The Arrival, Armageddon and Deep Impact, etc.), this has surprisingly not been the case with these films. Clearly, The Lord of the Rings is a much more mature and bold film, but the first installment in the Harry Potter series is much more than a childish adventure tale. One of the things that really makes it a great film is that the film is so faithful to the book. The writers and director Chris Columbus wisely decided not to take any creative liberties with the material that they had to work with. I am glad to see this, because literary faithfulness is almost always associated with better adapted films, and it's good to know that no one involved with the making of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone felt the need to improve upon a book that has been justifiably described as a `publishing phenomenon.'
J.K Rowling has created a brilliant adventure masterpiece with her first novel, which she reportedly began writing in some café in England back when she was a struggling single mother, and Chris Columbus has successfully taken on the daunting task of bringing it to the screen. One of the things that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has in common with The Lord of the Rings is that they both bring the audience to entirely new worlds, with the added bonus in Harry Potter that we actually start out in the real world (to some extent) and travel to the world of witches and wizards with the equally amazed Harry Potter.
On a structural level, Harry Potter takes an age-old underdog winning formula and reformulates it to make it interesting again. We get a surprisingly simple version of the good vs. bad structure that Star Wars exemplifies so well as Harry faces off with his pals in Griffindor against the obviously malicious Draco Malfoy (what a name!) and the rest of Slytherin. There is a surprising amount of characterization going on in this film even at the level of their actual names, to such extent that a couple of Draco's loyal goons have names like Crabbe and Goyle. Real charmers, I'm sure.
Obviously, in a film with this much fantasy and adventure, there is a definite need for some amount of computer-generated special effects. You just can't have a fight with a fully-grown mountain troll or a game of Quidditch played on broomsticks or a lot of the magic that took place in the movie without them, but thankfully they were wise enough not to take the special effects too far, a mistake the ease of which to make George Lucas is happily proving. The problem with computer-generated images these days is that no matter how huge the budget is or how high tech the images are, they NEVER look completely real. Chris Columbus seems to realize this, as can be seen, for example, in the Quidditch game, in which all of the players zooming around on their brooms are generally shown from a distance, so that the only way that we can tell that they aren't real, with a few exceptions, is that we've never seen someone in real life riding a flying broom. Given the fact that a game played entirely on flying brooms was made to look at least moderately convincing, we're more than willing to forgive the relatively few scenes in which the level of reality slips a little bit (such as the scene where the mountain troll is hanging Harry by his foot, swinging at him with his club).
The casting in the film, as well, could not possibly have been better. 12 year-old Daniel Radcliffe perfectly captures the unique character of Harry Potter, and his young friends in the film are portrayed by a series of preteen newcomers as well. The surprising thing here is not only that most of the children with lead roles in the film are very new to film acting, but that Chris Columbus managed to coax such convincing performances out of all of them (obviously, being fans of wonderful adventure tales such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, we all remember director Richard Donner mentioning in the director's commentary on The Goonies DVD that working with children made him contemplate suicide on a daily basis). Robbie Coltrane delivers the performance of his career as the lovable Hagrid, the gigantic Gamekeeper with the heart of gold and the clumsily loose tongue, while Richard Harris and Maggie Smith fit so well in their roles that they seem to have been written specifically for them (each easily reaching the incredible level of precision with which Ian McKellan and Christopher Lee each fit into their respective roles in The Lord of the Rings). And, of course, I can't forget Alan Rickman, who is so perfectly cast as Severus Snape that the role could not have been filled half as well by any other actor. Rickman has been unfortunately typecast since his absolutely brilliant performance in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and his role here as Snape is hardly a notch or two below that one.
Clearly, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is aimed at a relatively younger audience, since the books are aimed at a young adult audience, but the film manages to entertain children and adults alike, just as the books are easily enjoyable by any adult who is at least slightly in touch with his or her inner child. It is not often that a book or series of books as fascinating as the Harry Potter books comes along, and it's great to see that, just like The Lord of the Rings, the series is off to a smashing good start. I wish they would make movies out of some of the other adventure books that are just as fun to read as the Harry Potter books, such as The Phantom Tollbooth or The Chronicles of Narnia (someone's sitting on a gold mine with that one!!), but for now, I am personally more than content to sit back and watch a new Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings film for the next couple years, and hope that this trend of quality adventure will continue in the future.