Excellent visual effects and lacking very little

Rating: 10/10 (17 February 2002)

-Possible spoilers-
An adamant fan of the books I approached the film with a huge amount of caution - this caution however was proven unjustified with an adaptation true to the wonder of J.K. Rowling's novels. Most the humour remains intact indeed Rupert Grint adds enough humour for the whole cast, which compensates for the lack of it from Fred and George Weasley. Grint's facial expressions transform those scenes that could so easily have been just formality scenes that are included to familiarise viewers who haven't read the book with the plot. Emma Watson is excellent at being stuck up but somehow managing to remain warm and likeable as Hermione. And who of course could forget the fantastic performance of Daniel Radcliffe. Expertly chosen from tens of thousands of boys Daniel acted the part with amazing versatility, his light sarcastic humour, his charmingness shows through in the friendship of the central characters. Daniel and Rupert pull on, I believe their own friendship to achieve a fantastic scene at Christmas. Daniel's versatility again demonstrated as the scene changes from his pleasure and amazement at the invisibility cloak to the haunted love that he demonstrates in front of the mirror of Erised.
The adult cast is of course excellent, Maggie Smith plays a fantastic professor McGonagall although I confess the Scottish accent came as a bit of a surprise - don't know why! Richard Harris manages to portray the wisdom and loving of Dumbledore - although I felt much of the friendship between Dumbledore and Harry is missing, being replaced instead with a more formal Teacher - pupil relationship. Alan Rickman is of course suitably menacing as Snape showing the kind of hatred in his eyes not seen since his portrayel of the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. The only dissapointment in the otherwise great adult line up was Ian Hart as the bumbling professor Quirrel - his not having previously read the book showed through in a performance which showed lack of understanding of the character and had no development as the film went on.
The adaptation was as J.K. said very true to the books and with all the missed out scenes such as the discovery of Flamel on the chocolate frog being included on the DVD i feel that Chris Columbus filmed all scenes with a desire to remain as true as possible. Although some scenes were adapted I felt this was completely required to reduce the time from the initial 3 and 3/4 hours of film which had to be edited.
If you want something to complain about then you could say that the opening scenes with the Dursleys were a bit rushed and if they didn't have to show Harry's miserable home life then they would have been almost worth not including.
Higlights of the film: Definately Daniel's stunning performance, quidditch and the chess game plus many more. Lowlights: All to minor to name
In all an excellent film!