Simply GREAT !!!! :-)

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2001)

After reading the book, the first question that comes in mind about a movie about it is: what for ? Why should anyone want to watch the movie after reading the book ?
This was my first and foremost question, before I even saw the actual movie. With it I walked watching the actual picture, and it certainly had an answer for it.
Where should I start ? Where stop ?
The cast to Harry Potter is simply unbelievable good, the primus inter pares of strengths of this movie. Harry, Hermione, Ron and Hagrid simply got the right actors, which fit to their roles as perfectly natural as Angelina Jolie to Lara Croft ("Tomb Raider"), or Hugh Jackman to Wolvenrine ("X-Men"). And that in four roles at the same time ! Snape got Alan Rickman ("Galaxy Quest", "Dogma" etc), which looks only like a very bad choice until you've seen him, words are simply not enough to describe his simply genial acting here ! Definitely the best actor of the movie, which had no lack of good actors. The rest of the cast was extremely well chosen, and well acted, too. If at all, Dudley wasn't fat enough, and his role was far more aggressive than in the book, and well I always thought of Draco as being far more charismatic.
The other parts of the movie was just as good. Acting was very good to brilliant, directing etc was good, effects where wonderful: for example, Quidditch matches looked as real as they possibly could, even if I would have liked to see some more uses of slow motion here. A specialist told me that the sorting hat wasn't completely perfect, but I didn't noticed that (except that it was definitely smaller than in the book).
After seeing the movie for the first time, I was a little bit surprised that Daniel Radcliffe get bad comments from some people. I've checked this again when seeing the movie the second time, and I definitely and wholeheartedly disagree. Harry looks a little stunned at the start of the movie, but thats what one would expect - he tries not to get the attention of the Dursleys, plus they don't care about his feelings, and then Hagrid comes and tells him he is a wizard ! Harry's acting is just right at these places, I cannot imagine it done better.
The same goes for anyone commenting bad on either Ron or Hermione. These three are all simply natural ! Just look at real children, they don't have a broader set of expressions either. It is just like it should be.
Other people comment that the movie is just too faithful to the book, and that that is 'boring'. I strongly disagree, I don't want to see a movie about the book where some 'genius' has changed the plot. That would be completely annoying, upset me, and makes no sense. And, for example, do you ever remember a bad comment about a Shakespeare movie because they stick to the original plot ?
The real problem of the movie was time famine. Many funny parts of the book where left out, and many scenes, especially at the start, where simply too short to include the humor of the original book. To really understand and enjoy the movie, one REALLY should have read the book before !
And that was also the answer to my question at the start: this movie is finally incomplete, it cannot replace the reading, but it can give you the pictures you had on the inside while reading it again, and faithfully.
GREAT !!! I've seen it three times now, and I plan to see it again !