Fun but disappointingly shallow

Rating: 5/10 (18 January 2002)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Harry who? I must admit I have never read any of J.K. Rowling's apparently delightful Harry Potter novels. I always understood that they were for. well, children. Which was why I couldn't really understand all the hype surrounding the movie. To be honest, it wasn't until a few months ago, when every magazine on the shelf was covered with Harry Potter's gleaming mug, when I decided I better sit up and take notice. And that I did.

Commercials, trailers, previews, behind-the-scenes pull-out guides were appearing everywhere and, all this while, whoever was sitting next to me at the time would be wearing an enormously excited, genuine grin. All I could do was feign interest. and grin. The truth is, I wasn't interested. Just. curious. Then reviews and box-office results started to filter out - it was an immediate success! With everyone! Critics and viewers alike. I had to see it. didn't I? Not really actually. The truth is, if you doubt you'll be interested, you probably won't, or at least you should go in not expecting film of the year. Like I did (lowers head in shame).

This is a children's movie. Which apparently means bad acting, predictable dialogue and lots of standing around and screaming, before running around for another few minutes (Home Alone fashion). Is that what children's movies are all about? Just making a film worse than it could be? Apparently. I keep saying 'apparently', because if that's what the rest of the world think, then I'm not going to argue with them. But hang on, wasn't 'The Lion King' a children's movie? Wasn't the updated version of 'Miracle on 34th Street' primarily for kids at Christmas? The difference between these and 'Harry Potter' is there is something to enjoy for everyone. They work on more than one level. 'Harry Potter' doesn't. The characters are merely bold, stereotyped, completely undeveloped people, acting very, very flatly with little or no enthusiasm.
But hang on, it's a children's movie. SO WHAT?!?! It shouldn't make a single bit of difference to the actual quality. OK, so characters can be excused for lack of depth, but surely this should be made up for in superficial acting qualities like timing and charisma. Robbie Coltrane (Rubeus Hagrid) manages. Unfortunately the majority of the cast don't and end up looking like people straight out of a British Sunday afternoon children's series.
Should the title character really be so. plain? Am I meant to be behind him, cheering him on, hoping he does well? Sorry, I must have forgot to be. Daniel Radcliffe simply isn't cute enough - he's too mature. I know this is meant to be an example of his strong persona, but it just means I never feel sorry for him or never want him to succeed. He feels too untouchable, like James Bond or Indiana Jones, who to my knowledge, both surpass the age of eleven by some length. This, however, is the director's (Chris Columbus) fault and not Radcliffe's. At the beginning of the film we are shown Harry's Uncle and Aunt and how their outrageous neglect of him has seriously effected him. Or not. In fact, it doesn't appear that he could care less that he sleeps in a cupboard below the stairs. Harry doesn't look starved, over-worked or neglected, he just looks like a normal kid and the only thing frightening about his Aunt and Uncle is that they appear to have both fallen straight out of every single children's series ever made. OK, so they're caricatures, they don't need to be strongly developed characters, but I tired overly quick of their unoriginal personalities as I had seen it so many times before.
This is also how the majority of the characters in the film functioned; merely there to serve their purpose and act pantomimic. As a children's novel, J.K Rowling may have described them like this, which no doubt probed the imagination of children into creating such fun and lively characters, but in my opinion, on the screen, it doesn't work.
All of the child actors do a decent job to distinguish their relationships early on, but Chris Columbus' direction does nothing to elevate them above the average mark; and if Ron Weasley (played by Rupert Grint) does that weird little sideways smirk one more time, I'm going to scream.

Nobody in the film has quite enough 'umph' to show us what they're meant to be; Harry and co aren't quite likeable enough and had I not been bombarded with so much pre-performance information I probably wouldn't have guessed that Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) was meant to be the villain. Just to add another nail in the coffin of unprofessional film-making, the children even appeared to nearly forget their lines on several occasions, as their sentences drew to a hesitant end; which, quite frankly, I cannot understand since half the time I knew what they were going to say before they even opened their mouths.
The only child who impressed me was the young Emma Watson who played Hermione Granger; she somehow managed to be likeable and irritating at once. The adult actors don't do a much better job with the aforementioned Robbie Coltrane being the only one who seems to be comfortable with his role; even the usually brilliant, Alan Rickman, disappointed me.
'Disappointed' seems to summarise the whole experience for me. With all the hype surrounding the film it's difficult not to be disappointed. But, oh my, were there many things to disappoint me. In this day and age I expect to see a higher quality of special effects in a film, especially in one with such a huge budget. Remember in the 1950's films where you'd see a shot inside a car and it would be obvious they were actually in a studio and not really on the open road? Well it seems Chris Columbus thought he'd go back to using that effect for the broomstick scenes. Oh no, a troll has broken free from the dungeon! But he's not real, he's a computer image. One so blatantly a computer image that I'm surprised the children fell for it. What? He's supposed to be 'real'? But he looks so cartoony and two-dimensional. OK, well what about the part where they were all playing a sports game on the PlayStation? What was that, it wasn't a computer game? They were meant to be playing a magical sport called 'Quidditch'? Oh right. I'll be blunt again - it didn't look real by a long stretch and it sounded like there was a crowd of 200,000 even though there was obviously only about 200 children in there.
Having said that, the game of 'Quidditch' was actually one of the more exciting parts of the film. It was fast, fun and for once I couldn't guess what was coming next. well, sort of. As the scene progressed, it became more and more like every sport's film ever made where we are forced to feel uplifted and behind the losing side (the good side), but it did go creepily clichÃ© by suddenly cutting to Coltrane's character who was cheering them on: `Yeah, go on, you can do it!' I think his words were, or something else which made him look as equally uncomfortable.
But it didn't really matter, because it entertained the viewer's and most importantly, the kids, and this is what the film was all about. But this is all it did do, which I personally think is a very easy feat. Ironically, for a film all about magic, it didn't quite have enough movie magic; something which, if possessed, can literally turn a bad movie into a work of art (e.g. Star Wars). But it had just about enough to do the business; just enough charm to make me smile; just enough interesting set-pieces for me to never really get bored or look at my watch; just enough. of everything. It did what it had to do and nothing more.
'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone as it's called in Britain)' is a film which must have something that really hits a magical nerve in many movie-goers, otherwise the film would not have been so critically and commercially well-received. Unfortunately, it missed mine. I enjoyed the experience, but was basically disappointed and frustrated to find not a cinematic masterpiece, but a technically average and underwhelming film. Of this year's main movies, Harry Potter is not one that will live in the hearts and memories of viewers and the bizarre comparison between this and 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' is utterly unfounded. In my opinion, there is no comparison.
An ultimately disappointing experience that was fairly fun and enjoyable while it lasted, but never really went that bit further. One for the kids. Now, I'm off to make a children's film. Which means I'll have a few heroic kids; a mean kid who is fatter than the rest and picks his nose and stuff like that; a bad guy who is actually quite nice and a good guy who is actually quite bad. Sound good? Didn't think so.
6/10 (3*/5)