Good, but doesn't live up to all of the hype

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2001)

Unfortunately, I can't say that I've read any of the books. Although I've heard only good things about them. I can, however, comment on what I saw today. Harry Potter is not what all of the critics make it out to be. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that great either.
First of all, I'm glad that Chris Columbus actually caste British actors with authentic accents. Nothing drives me crazier than watching a 2 and Â½ hour movie hearing an American actor trying to sound British. Another plus is getting an unknown actor to play Harry. Daniel Radcliff's career has skyrocketed because of this one movie.
Many reviewers have complained about Daniel Radcliffe's acting. I thought he did a fairly good job. He didn't seem to be under acting to me. Maybe I am being naive because I have never read any of the books. But it seems to me that people are looking at the movie compared to the book more than just the movie for what it was.
I thought all of the actors did wonderful jobs. I can really see Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, and Rupert Grint having flourishing acting careers. They were flawless except for a couple of scenes at the end where Grint is overacting to the point of sheer annoyance.
Without a doubt, the best performance was Alan Rickman's. He didn't get many speaking parts but when he did he was perfect. And he made up for the talking he didn't do with his facial expressions. Maggie Smith was also very good.
One problem I had with the movie was the cheesy CGI effects that were scene in the battle with the troll, and just about all of the scenes involving flying on broomsticks. The scenes didn't look real at all. It had me wondering why they even bothered, or why they didn't make the whole movie CGI. The scene where all of the boats were floating into the school for the first time was very beautiful. (But if they had we wouldn't have been able to see Alan Rickman playing Severus Snape now would we ?*sigh*) The talking hat also gave me a headache.
SPOILERS BELOW
The end of the movie was where it started to fall downhill. For instance, why didn't they better secure the door where the stone was actually hidden? If a 10 year old girl can open the door what would make them think that a stronger and more experienced wizard would have a hard time. The same is true with the vines after they get past the three headed dog.
The chess scene should not have even been in the movie at all. This is where Grint became a little too overdramatic for my liking. A couple of questions popped into my mind while I was watching this: 1)	Why is there is a huge chess board on the way to the stone? What smarty thought this thing up? 2)	Why did Grint have to mount a horse to play the game? Couldn't he have stood on the side and yelled out commands? 3)	Why did Harry and Hermione have to be pieces? Why weren't there enough pieces to play the game on their side? And suppose there were only 2 people there instead of 3?
Then in the ending when `he who shall not be named' goes through Harry's body and knocks him unconscious, why didn't he grab the stone? Why would he go through all of that trouble, have the opportunity, and then fail to grab it and fly out of the room. I heard that the ending was seriously altered to better accommodate the movie. So that must have been one of the changes from the book.
So all in all Harry Potter was pretty decent. It had a couple of flaws but not enough to bring the movie down entirely. The actors were great and the screen play wasn't the worst that it could have been.