Aimed at the very young and the extremely simple-minded

Rating: 4/10 (4 January 2002)

***some spoilers
Well, I've seen two films in the last 2 weeks, Lord of the Rings, and this, and had exactly the opposite reacitons. I read LOTR a year ago, and hated it, and only saw the movie on friends' reccomendations - and loved it. I read Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone about a year ago, and loved it. I saw the film, and hated every minute of it.
My key problem is the child actors. The actors for the teachers are mostly very good, especially Alan Rickman (Prof. Snape) and wotsit the flying teacher. However, though in the books the characters were well formed, and were believable enough that you could identify them and feel for them to an extent, the characters in the film feel terribly like they're just reading lines, and never really got inside the character. Another problem is that a lot of the scenes involving all of the children have been largely rewritten for some reason, and now feel like they come from the 1920s! A good example is when Harry first meets Draco Malfoy. Malfoy speaks like a gangster being threatening and ominous, not like a school bully! I'm sure this wasn't the case in the books. Another example is the way that some characters, especially all the Weasleys, act like they're 4 years younger than their ages. Fred and George especially - they're supposed to be 13/14, but act like prepubescent mischief makers which I thought were dead and buried when Enid Blyton stopped writing!
Other than the actors, I have just one other qualm: that so much was chopped from the plot which described how it was worked out that someone was after the stone, that it seems that they simply pluck the idea out of thin air. In the book, this is believable, because there is enough compelling evidence that this is the case, whereas in the film the evidence amounts to a suspicion and a dog bite on someone's knee. Hardly convincing.
Other than this, I have no complaints. Unfortunately, the above was most of the film :-)
I rate it 4/10, and would say it's a waste of time to see it if you're over 11.