6 out of 10

Rating: Null/10 (18 September 2004)

Thank God the acting got better. Most of the lines sounded rehearsed, especially Daniel Radcliffe's. I'll give them some credit for acting simply because over the course of the next movies, they did get a bit better, but it's sad when I've only had 2 months of training in drama and I can act better than some of the actors in this movie.
I did like how Rupert Grint played Ron, he seemed like the type of person I imagined he would be (maybe that's because I read the book after seeing the movie, but it still fit to me). Some of the lines seemed pointless, like people constantly explaining what they were doing even though anyone with a brain could figure it out for themselves.
The score could have used a little help, but overall, it sounded suitably "magical" to me, even though Howard Shore could have probably made it better, and I like most of John Williams' work. My main problem was with how repetitive the music was. Over and over, the same song. I'm all for listening to songs a lot, but there is such thing as too much.
The storyline was good until I read the book and realized just HOW MUCH THEY CUT OUT OF THE MOVIE!!! I understand that they would have had a 5-hour movie if they put everything in it, but they cut out all of the good parts of the book. I wish they had decided to use a different director early on instead of for the third movie, because it seemed like Chris Columbus thought that the sheer publicity would make up for all the things he cut out.
I know I'm making it sound bad, but there were a lot of things that could use some help. I did like the movie overall, but, like I said, there were plenty of things that stuck with me as being extremely annoying. I think that Chris Columbus just didn't do JK Rowling's book justice in this movie, and you'd have to read the book just to get the storyline, when you should get it out of the movie.