Faithful to the book.

Rating: 9/10 (5 September 2015)

This film is an adaptation of the first book of Harry Potter's saga, written by the British author J.K. Rowling. Directed by Chris Columbus, a man with experience in making films for young audiences ("Home Alone" is paradigmatic), this film has a very young cast led by Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, in the roles of the apprentices wizards Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, while also features veterans actors of the British theater and cinema, as Richard Harris (in one of his last appearances in movies before his death), Maggie Smith and Robbie Coltrane, in the roles of Professor Dumbledore, school's headmaster, his main collaborator, Professor McGonagall and the school's gamekeeper, Hagrid.
This film marks the start of one of the most acclaimed and profitable franchises in the twenty-first century cinema, where several acting careers met its beginning or end. The film practically doesn't have a single negative note: he managed to pick up a book that was already a huge success and amplify it astronomically without sacrificing its authenticity. Anyone who has read the book recognizes it in this film and sees the book's magic gaining life, body and shape. The special effects, the details of the scenario, the costumes (any similarity between the school robes and the traditional black cloaks of university students of Portugal is not a mere coincidence, since Rowling lived in Portugal and has even married a Portuguese) all contribute to make us feel that this movie is the book we read and we have on our hands. Phenomenal, one of the best adaptations of a novel.