A meaningless experience

Rating: Null/10 (22 June 2002)

There's no story here at all. Harry P. and company move from one disconnected episode to another with little regard for what's come before. The game of quidditch (whatever) seems thrown in for gee wiz; it certainly has nothing to do with plot. By the time we move through the maze of Hogwart's gigantic cavernous structure (how many wizards are pupils here -- 25,000???) I forgot all about (and didn't care about) that silly red stone. Wonderfully talented cast (Rickman, especially, doing a dead-on imitation of Olivier's Richard III). Pedestrian, paceless, unimaginative direction. But when a film makes a billion dollars, that hardly matters. Actually, the DVD extra features are more imaginative and fun than the film itself. I understand that kids all over the world are racing towards reading, just to get into the Harry Potter phenom. That's cool.