Great book, Good movie, poor editing

Rating: 7/10 (18 November 2001)

Being a fan of the Harry Potter series, I was of course very interested in seeing the adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone". Having now seen the film, I'm left with mixed feelings.
I hadn't read the book in just over a year, so I came to this movie with as much of a blank slate as someone who has read the book can. I was familiar with the characters, knew the basics of the story, but had forgotten most of the important specifics. This is the way I wanted it. I wanted to rediscover things via the movie and then be able to say "Oh Yeah, they sure did nail that". Unfortunately, there were all too few moments like that for me.
The adaptation, to say the very least, is exceptionally accurate. Very few novels have had such spot on adaptations made. Accuracy however does not a great movie make. The movie is good, but suffers from some of the worst editing I've ever encountered in a big budget motion picture. This is truly painful for me to say, because the man who edited this film, Richard Francis-Bruce, also edited some of my all time favourite films, including "The Shawshank Redemption", "Seven" and "The Green Mile". For some reason though, he has completely failed with Harry Potter. The movie's scenes are cobbled together in a very stilted, halting manner.
RFB seems to have forgotten the cinematic language of editing in this film. Cuts denote little to no time passing, fades and dissolves denote the larger passage of time. In this film, We will cut from a scene of Harry in the kitchen, to another scene of harry in the kitchen which is supposed to take place several days later. The cut facilitating this however is so abrupt that if you haven't read the book, you will find yourself momentarily confused as you try to sort out where in the flow of the story this new scene is supposed to be. This kind of editing is prevalent throughout the movie. The film is in dire need of some transitional scenes and montage sequences in order to really give the sense of the passage of time.
In spite of the lack-luster editing, the movie never feels slow or overlong, and clocking in at 2 hours and 30 minutes, I was surprised to find that I felt no more than 90 minutes could have possibly elapsed. I would have gladly sat in that theatre for another half hour or more, which would have been to the benefit of the film, allowing them to flesh out many of the things that are sorely missed. The ending, to those who haven't read the books, is going to feel clichÃ©d and tacked on. An extra half hour, to flesh out the Dursley's, show more of the unfair point deductions from Gryffindor (thanks to one Prof. Snape) and to allow for some transitional montage scenes showing Harry and the gang in their various classes doing various magic things, would have helped the film out immensely. As it stands, you never really get the sense that Harry attends any classes at Hogwarts, as they are shown so briefly as to be quickly forgotten.
Supposedly, the original rough-cut of the film was just over 3 hours long, and I very much hope that this cut makes it to DVD in the form of a directors cut, as any additional fleshing out of this movie can only be to its benefit.
In conclusion, Harry Potter is a solid film, never feels as long as it actually is, and is a very accurate adaptation, but for all of that, there are definitely some major problems that could have been easily solved with better editing an additional scenes.