So religiously faithful to the book that it fails

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2001)

I REALLY tried to enjoy this movie but it just didn't happen. Perhaps I got too caught up in the unneccessary hype but in that case I think that reviewers and critics alike got caught up too much in the same stuff, so much caught up were they that they didn't really see this film for how bland it really was. Had this been a kids fantasy film released without the unneccessary baggage it would have recieved a whole string of 5s out of 10 as opposed to the sometimes insanely brilliant reviews critics accorded it.
To put it succintly the special effects were average (come on! compare it to the most modern of films and you will realise that you were shortchanged, only the quidditch match came close to modern special effects standards), the set pieces were good, the acting cast underperformed, the cinematography was also average, the story was reasonable though it stuck so religiously to the book that people who had read the book beforehand would not have been surprised at all by the storyline (and the Harry Potter plot in the book is designed to actually surprise you) and the same goes for the satirical gimmicks which are exactly the same as in the book.
If I had simply watched the movie and simply not read the book perhaps I would have given this movie a higher rating but I didn't and so there were absolutely no surprises in it for me, except disappointment at the parts left out.
The performances were uninspired and featured no originality, almost all character types played you've seen before. The exceptions are Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman and the child actors (excluding the kid that plays Harry Potter). These characters were original but Robbie Coltrane's character was underused. He only really takes part in a few minutes of film and his character is given some space to grow but then Chris Columbus shuts him off again to focus more on the bland, overcliched characters. The young actress who plays Hermoine did a good job, as did the orange haired actor that played Potter's friend (can't remember the name off the top of my head!) and of course in an otherwise bland film Alan Rickman adds more colour (as Robbie Coltrane has done) as an evil (or is he?) schoolteacher Snape.
You'll wonder with all the characters I've named displaying good performances how this movie could possibly be average. The answer probably lies in the structure of the story which doesn't differ from the book at all, even to provide a more cinema-suited experience thus young fans (my 11 year old sister, an avid Potter fan, thought the movie quite bad) will be bored to death by a movie which is exactly the same as the book they read. Why spend more money for a pop-up picture book when you've got the paperback at home?
The biggest complaints with this movie however (and also with regards to its structure) is that it is far too long! 2 and a half hours may be half an hour shorter than Titanic or Lord of The Rings: Fellowship of the Ring but those movies have complex story and character development to occupy the three hours, Harry Potter is a childrens movie with characters that do not change at all throughout the film (as you would expect from a childrens movie), therefore it does not have anything to fill the extra hour (the film should really have been 1 and a half hours) and as such it drags on to the point where it nears a coma-induction stage. At one point I was checking my watch every five minutes!
Sure, this movie is faithful to the book but with average acting, average special effects, a predictable plot and an overlong running time is this movie really faithful to the magic and spirit of the book?