A great film adaptation but. . .

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2001)

For starters, i am a huge Harry Potter fan. Not because it's a craze right now or because everyone else is reading it, but because I read the books and have grown a love for them, for the amazing story lines and intricate plot points. And the characters are all three dimensional and well written, and you can't help but feel for them. JK Rowling has put a lot of time and planning into this little baby of hers, and it shows.
Hence, I've been waiting for this movie to come out ever since I first heard about it. I have avoided movie reviews and all other such nonsense as much as possible so I could have my own unbiased opinion of a movie that is based on books I love so much.
Well, one of my favorite parts was the Monster's Inc trailer directly before it. This Trailer alone is worth the price of admission! But enough of that, on to the movie.
Well, Being the enormous Potter fan that I am, my main concern was for it to stay true to the books. So I will start with the good things about the movie first.
All of the characters were perfectly cast. The girl who played Hermione was exactly how I pictured her to be, and did a dead on performance. The special effects were amazing, and I have become especially impressed with how far technology has come in the last few years. The story line also contained most of the key events in the novel and was almost entirely true to it. It is one of the best film adaptations to a book I have ever seen, and I must say that I did enjoy it.
However, I must admit that this movie has its weaknesses. And it is not the fault of the movie, its director, or its actors. The fault in the movie lies in the fact that it is based on a book that has a very large and loyal fan base, many of which have read this book more then once, and know it cover to cover.
This movie clocked in at nearly 2 and a half hours and it still seemed entirely too short. The book is so complex, in that it and all the books following are all interconnected, and there is fore shadowing in every one. All of these events seem important, whether in character development or in relation to the current or future plots. There are so many secondary characters in this book that they aren't given nearly enough screen time. (the Dursley's for instance, one small example. Fred and George Weasley, another. These two are a couple of my favorite characters and we didn't see nearly enough of them!) I felt that we weren't given quite a clear glimpse of Snape's absolute loathing of Harry Potter, or why he was helping Harry if he hated him so much. This is important to the character of Snape. And this kind of stuff seemed to happen entirely to often.
That has to be my main concern, however. Because I've read these books and know them so well, I can all to clearly point out things that are missing from the original book, and even though I was enjoying myself, this kept plaguing on my mind and somewhat distracted me. Because I have read this book, I know certain facts that it was necessary to leave out due to length of the film was already at monstrous proportions. And I noticed that they were missing.
Which leads me to the next fault of the movie. Because it wanted to stay so true to the books, so much information needed to be included into the movie, and I got the impression that the movie was slightly rushed. The transition from one time period to the next, as this book takes place over the course of a school year, makes it need far more time to go through that.
Alright, overall, I give this 3 out of 4 stars, as it was a noble effort on behalf of the production team to bring this movie to life, and although I sound like I'm nit-picking the movie, I was impressed, as I think they did the best they could with the material. However, before watching it yourself, I would recommend picking up the first book if you haven't already (as most of you should have by now). This movie is a companion piece to the far superior book that it is based upon, and I wouldn't see it as anything other then that. If you see this movie without at some point reading the book, you are missing out greatly.
Well, this book is also the shortest in the series so far, which has me thinking. I have such a vivid imagination of the other three books and characters, do I need a movie to describe events in the book when I prefer the book to a director's version of it? And if I was distracted by missing information in the portrayal of the first one, do I need to even bother watching any future renditions?
Oh well, I'll probably watch the future ones anyway. I'll just know what to expect and expect to have a good time!