Great Book. Good Movie, But Should Have Been Better.

Rating: 7/10 (24 November 2001)

If you asked me which was my favorite Harry Potter book, I'd have a tough time telling you. I've read all four to date, and thoroughly enjoyed each one. What makes the books thoroughly captivating is their combination of the big and the small; quiet self-discovery and rollicking adventure; magic and the ordinary world. So, what went wrong with this movie?

It's this: ALL the "small" scenes are missing. Hermione helping Harry and Ron with their homework. Harry comforting the poor kid, self-conscious, hand-me-down Ron, with stories about his own extremely impoverished upbringing. Ron's brothers teasing each other and Ron. Madam Pince, the librarian, shaking her feather duster in exasperation at Harry. And hundreds more. All those "little" interchanges that unveil the characters and their world to us in the book and show us their development and growth, and let us bond with them, are just not in the movie. Okay, arguably, with Alan Rickman as Snape you don't really have to work too hard to show the audience Snape's dark and nasty side. But, that economy of casting shortchanges the audience. For example, Snape does some really mean and nasty things to Harry in the book that really challenges Harry's nature and spirit. But by NOT showing us ANY of that, Chris Columbus leaves us only with pre-made fully-developed characters, and not the living, growing children of Rowling's masterpieces.
So, what IS left? Sort of a junior "Raiders of the Lost Ark" set in a magical world. Nothing to sneeze at, certainly, and a very enjoyable movie, but a complete turnabout of Rowling's focus and emphasis. Where Rowling depicts ordinary children (or at least magical children with many recognizably ordinary traits) and their "mundane" although hilarious lives at this magical wizards school, and secondarily describes their high adventures, Columbus turns the formula around. In his movie, the adventures are first and foremost, and the rest gets skated over. Rowling, too, has a true gift for comic exaggeration and counterpoint, which here gets short shrift.
Compare this movie to "The Witches", that masterpiece of Nicolas Roeg's from Roald Dahl's classic book, with Angelica Huston as the chief nasty. Or with Rob Reiner's fractured fairy tale, "The Princess Bride". "Harry Potter" should have been a lot more fun, and could have been, if somehow a better balance had been struck. Still, that said, see the movie. Just hope for something better from the next one, and the next one, and the one after that!