Charmingly entertaining.

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2002)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a fluffy, feel-good movie. It is not as good as the book, and it could have been better made. The fact is, it wasn't, and no amount of whining now will change that.
WHAT I LIKED ABOUT THIS MOVIE:
1. The acting--once I got over the entirely British cast. (Not a slur! I'm American, it's just very, very unexpected for me to be seeing something like that. It was a great touch to the movie, overall, and I'm very glad J.K. Rowling insisted upon the decision.) Though the characters seemed watered-down from their book counterparts, the child actors seemed made for their roles, and I believe they did a superb job. The same goes for the adult cast, (sadly underused, a problem I hope is remedied by Movie Two, which I haven't yet seen, or in later installments).
2. Watching this movie made me feel like a little kid. It's very feel-good, and sometimes you just want a fluffy piece of whimsy to get your mind off how much real life sucks.
3. Alan Rickman as Severus Snape--Warner Brothers, please repeat after me: PERFECTION. The only reason I originally saw Sorcerer's Stone was to see Rickman in it, and likewise, he was the reason I shelled out nineteen dollars to buy the movie on VHS. Damn his voice is sexy; I melt everytime I listen to one of his lines.
Now that I'm starting to sound like a total freak, I just want to end this incoherency by saying: once you look past what Sorcerer's Stone could have been, it is truly a great film to watch. Unless, of course, like me, you get too distracted by Rickman to watch the rest of the movie.