A rushed and inaccurate film

Rating: 4/10 (17 July 2002)

I put off seeing this movie for a long time because i was real fan of the books and i thought the movie might ruin the story....i was right.
A major problem that i see with the movie is that so many parts of the story are missed out that i can't see how you can follow it without the book, but if you have read the book then it will annoy you when you notice parts of the story that are missing or changed.
The start of the story is rushed and when harry does find out he's a wizard he has virtually no reaction as if he was expecting it. In fact the whole story in my opinion is rushed and no time was taken up to build atmosphere so in the end it didn't seem to really matter what happened.
The casting of the lead roles was also terrible, in the book Ron is described as being tall and lanky and growing out of his robes, but in the film he is short and fits all his clothes perfectly, Harry also seems wrong, in the book he is described as small and skinny with untidy hair, but in the film he isn't really very small or skinny and has perfect hair, Hermione is described as goofy and having large teeth, but the casters inevitably cast a nice pretty girl who will look good in the later movies, this is the same with many of the other characters. Also most of the main characters have lovely home counties accents, with the exception of the dumb Neville, the groundskeeper Hagrid and a couple of Irish guys they chucked in there for political correctness. This film was obviously cast for an american audience with their stereotypes of British accents, what about the rest of the UK or are they not allowed into Hogwarts.
Hopefully the next film will be better at creating a story rather than just picking his favourite parts of the book and hoping the audience can fill in the gaps. The damage has already been done with the casting, but maybe they'll do better next time with the future characters that are introduced.