A good introduction to this universe

Rating: 7/10 (27 July 2016)

In preparation for the upcoming fantastic beasts and where to find them I have decided that I am finally going to watch the harry potter films starting with this one. The premise sees an 11 year old boy who's parents were wizards invited to a magic school called Hogwarts. Daniel Radcliffe plays harry potter and he gives a truly fantastic kid performance. You see the innocence in his character but you also see the strength he has that make him the interesting character that he is in this film. Rupert grint plays Ron weasley and Emma Watson plays hermione granger as Harry's two best friends and they are both really good in this film as well. They are both fun characters who have good chemistry together and with harry as they go on their journey and it is fun. Robbie Coltrane plays hagrid who gets harry to Hogwarts and is a mentor to our group of wizards and a lovable character. Maggie smith plays one of the teachers and she does a really good job being a good motherly figure to harry. The late Alan Rickman plays snape one of the teachers and gives one of the more interesting performances in the film as he seems to be antagonistic towards harry but he has more to him as a character. The story has a great introduction into the wizard world and a pretty personal story for harry as he tries to get over his parents situation and his introduction to Hogwarts. However, this film is quite long and there are allot of filler in the plot which means it takes too long to get into the interesting plot of the film. The script has some fun dialogue in it that builds the friendship between the characters. However, because if their young age sometimes the drama doesn't come across that well which is a negative for this film. The style has some decent special effects and cgi especially during the quiditch game. However, the film does have some pacing issues and some of the cgi does look pretty dated now. Overall this is a decent film that does a good job in getting you excited for the sequels.