Wild About Harry!

Rating: 10/10 (16 November 2001)

The movie starts off disappointingly slow, and Daniel Radcliffe, the boy playing the famous 'Boy Who Lived' at first delivers such an exaggerated performance that I was afraid he would turn out to be just another cardboard child actor, but then about fifteen minutes into the movie, everything picks up and I ended up having one of the best movie experiences of the year!
Though not on the same preternaturally mature acting level as Haley Joel Osment (and aside from some very melodramatically surprised expressions he pulls when he first finds out he's a wizard), Radcliffe has enough range, guts, and charm to make one astonishingly convincing Harry Potter. He projects best when Harry's upset, determined, or eager -- best, in fact, when he's just being a regular kid who just happens to know magic. I wouldn't have had Harry Potter played any other way, or by any other person!
Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are cast perfectly as Harry's best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Watson brings the perfect amount of eccentricity to her role as a, well, a know-it-all, and Grint pulls well-timed comical expressions that had people laughing without him even having to say anything.
The adults in the movie were perfect in their roles. Robbie Coltrane was great as the giant, loose-lipped, soft-hearted Rubeus Hagrid, Richard Harris made for a low-key Dumbledore, and Alan Rickman did an excellent job at being Snape, in spite of getting short shrift in terms of development.
The music is yet another triumph from the incomparable John Williams. It evokes the mystery, magic, whimsy, and sheer adventure of the books perfectly! Indeed, the fast-paced action scores may even have helped save some scenes from looking too dull or too fake.
The special effects are sometimes superb (for the smaller magic tricks) and sometimes disappointingly obvious (for most of the bigger ones), but it's not difficult to understand in some of the more dangerous scenes. I'd rather have a CGI Harry hurled around at breakneck speed on a renegade broomstick a thousand feet off the ground than risk killing the real thing! On the other hand, some CGI'd characters stylistically looked an awful lot like they came from the PlayStation version of Harry Potter (essentially moving more like plastic or rubber than real people). With the budget the movie had, I felt there could have been more work on the realistic look of the CGI. On the OTHER hand, Chris Columbus brought in just enough close-up live action shots and real-people stunt shots for me to overlook the fakeness.
One thing that never went wrong in the movie were the action sequences. They were absolutely stunning! Everything from Harry's dangerous search for the Sorcerer's Stone to the heart-pumping battle over the Golden Snitch was well-directed, well-shot and well-cut.
In conclusion: The movie was fabulous! Go see it! Go see it! (At LEAST once!)