The first 'Harry Potter' makes no mistakes - and takes no chances, and has no style

Rating: 5/10 (23 July 2009)

My summary might be a little harsh on what is, after all, a highly entertaining children's movie that's grossed hundreds of millions of dollars and, undoubtedly, still delights children that didn't exist in 2001 through DVD and Blu-Ray. But I stand by my statement - I liked it when I was 9, and I liked it last night, but 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' is paralyzed by its fear of alarming any part of its audience.
The chief difference between this and later Potter films is in its tone. This movie replicates the dreaminess and whimsicality of the book, faithfully recreating even incidental magical scenery from the novel with painstaking care - however, it doesn't add any of its own. That, in microcosm, is the one thing wrong with the entire 146 minutes of film: the plot unfolds identically to the book's, the dialog is often taken verbatim from it, the world is designed as the most neutral and safe - SAFE, is the problem - version of the Potter universe one can imagine, and the overall effect is that of an illustrated audiobook. Director Chris Columbus takes absolutely no risks, a decision which only seems more foolish as the years go by and newer Potter films, like Alfonso Cuaron's excellent 'Prisoner of Azkaban', burst with imagination and creativity. While, like 'Star Wars' (but less so), 'Stone' does evoke a sense of wonder at the magical things in Harry's world (and, in case anyone misses the point, the movie's child actors exchange chuffed grins for about a third of the running time), the anxious restraint with which the whole deal is executed renders it rather leaden.
Hence the comment about paralysis I started off with. It may be well made, but 'Stone' is - tragically, as it turns out, considering the quality of all the movie's other ingredients - uninspired. But it is rescued from a boring fate by the fact that it is, after all, telling a cracking good yarn. One that I (heretically) think is actually better for film than for a book, where the flimsiness of its plotting and lack of true literary spark makes it come off as a kind of Roald Dahl Lite. Add to this a stable of magnificent British actors who gleefully shed their layers of reverend good service in classics on stage and screen and dive totally into their spectacularly silly roles. The roll-call is phenomenal: Sir Richard Harris, Dame Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, John Hurt and others in smaller parts that pull them off with panache calculated to shade any flaws in the performances of the younger actors - who, by the way, are really quite good. They don't need to be brilliant, and they're good enough here as 11-year-old kids. Which is what they are.
The story, anyone should know. Harry Potter is an orphan whose parents die in mysterious circumstances and who, at the age of 11, after a decade of living miserably with a cruel aunt and uncle, discovers that he is a wizard. He goes off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he finds that he is not only a wizard, but a famous wizard: the only one ever to survive an attack by the now-vanquished Dark Lord, You-Know-Who. Dark Things are stirring at Hogwarts - there is a whisper in the Forbidden Forest, a teacher with suspicious designs, and something horrible lies under the trap door in the left third floor corridor . . . and above it.
I quite enjoyed it actually. Shame it had to be so stuffy. Recommended.