An acceptable enough origin story

Rating: 7/10 (16 February 2009)

I'll preface this review by saying that I did not treat this as I would the other Harry Potter films due to its nature as (a) a first film foray into the world of Harry Potter and (b) an origin story. It is inevitably going to be exposition-heavy and heavy-handed in its treatment of the characters, and the plot is always going to be as literally adapted as possible. Christopher Columbus, while probably not the best director for this job, nevertheless managed to pull it off without doing a terrible job. Had this been judged as any other Potter film, however, it would probably have received a 4/10 as it was possibly one of the worst in comparison to the others.
The story is a straight adaptation of Rowling's first Potter book. Young Harry is rescued from a life of misery, neglect and cruelty at the hands of his aunt, uncle and cousin when he learns that he's a wizard and is destined to attend the famous Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry - the British learning institution for magical folk. Compounded by this is that he discovers he is an involuntary celebrity in the magical world because of the manner in which he was orphaned. An evil wizard, Voldemort, killed his parents when he was a child but was unable to kill him and was robbed of his powers and a body - and nobody understands why.
Up to this point, Columbus does his magic. He portrays the world of Hogwarts beautifully (although the following films were able to do a much better job of it) and in a manner that is faithful to the novel, he shows how Harry meets Ron and Hermione, his closest friends, and introduces the main entourage of characters with equal grace (Harry's classmates, Malfoy, Snape, McGonagall and the other teachers, Hagrid, and most importantly, Dumbledore). He discards events and truncates the length of certain scenes but leaves the essential parts.
Then, of course, the main plot of the film is discussed. A powerful object known as the Philosopher's Stone (Sorcerer's Stone in the oddly named American version) is being hidden at Hogwarts, which grants the user immortality and limitless wealth. Harry is suspicious of a teacher, and does his damndest to try and stop him, and his fears are worsened by the realization that the person trying to steal the stone isn't doing so for personal gain, but to return Voldemort, the killer of his parents, back to power.
This bit, Columbus does not handle as well. He did not cast someone significant for Voldemort when he makes his appearance and as such there is a disconnect when Fiennes' Voldemort makes his appearance in the fourth film, and opts instead to CGI Voldemort into existence. He takes creative liberties with the traps that are used to hide the stone, and eliminates a few altogether (although that at least was somewhat acceptable). However, his biggest blunder was leaving out crucial scenes which establish Harry's suspicions. It becomes important in later books (and by extension, later films) and isn't handled properly.
That being said, the film gains considerable strength of character from Richard Harris' Albus Dumbledore. He has more or less defined the face of Dumbledore and his acting capability is far superior to that of the farcical, ridiculous Gambon. As for my recommendation, if you're a Potter fan and haven't seen this film for whatever reason, I would give it a try anyway, just to see the strengths in his adaptation. A tentative "yes" from me does not exempt it from the fact that the film has some serious flaws.