starts off well but can't sustain itself

Rating: Null/10 (4 July 2002)

I must admit right up front that I have never read the J.K. Rowling novel on which `Harry Potter: The Sorcerer's Stone' is based. As a result, I come to the movie `cold' as it were, being neither a full-fledged aficionado nor an inveterate denigrator of this phenomenally popular book series that, in the past few years, has taken the literary world by storm. Thus, I will not be able to say to what degree Chris Columbus' handsomely designed film adaptation does or does not do justice to its source. All I can say is how the film struck someone like myself who comes to the material fresh and without expectations of any kind. Well, the verdict, I must say, is a decidedly mixed one, so please allow me to elaborate.
Let me state, at the outset, that the movie starts off splendidly. We are introduced to the infant Harry Potter as he is mysteriously dropped off one night at the home of his maternal aunt and uncle in suburban England. We quickly move ahead in time to find Harry, now aged 11, living a sort of male Cinderella existence, mistreated and overlooked by both his surrogate parents and Harry's precocious, spoiled brat cousin, appropriately named Dudley. In the early stretches, the film does a superb job subtly injecting the excitement of magic into a real world setting. There is also quite a bit of wry humor as Harry begins to slowly awaken to the fact that he has these strange and inexplicable powers to manipulate the elements of his world to his own advantage. The film retains its spirit of fun as Harry, led by the mysterious but lovably burly Gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid, journeys to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn the tools of the trade towards which his eccentric destiny is leading him (his parents were also witches, killed by the evil wizard, Voldemort, who obviously has designs on Potter himself). The preparations for Harry's enrollment in school (i.e. purchasing a magic wand) and the attempt to find his way to this magic hidden land are executed with fine, deft strokes, and Columbus keeps the movie blithely bouncing along at just the right momentum and speed. Harry's introduction to the school itself is well done as well, as he meets an assortment of colorful characters (both faculty members and schoolmates) and boggles at the amusement park-like atmosphere he finds there, with an imaginative surprise seemingly lurking around ever corner.
Yet not too long after we hit the school, something seems to go out of `Harry Potter.' Perhaps the anticipation raised by the first half of the film leads us to expect too much, but, if the truth be told, the storytellers don't seem to have thought much about what to do with Harry once they get him to his destination. Though we like Potter's two chums, Ron and Hermione, and a number of the faculty members, the adventures Harry ends up encountering while at the school seem rather tame, bland and ordinary when you get right down to it. The monsters the writers have dreamed up for him to conquer aren't particularly interesting or intriguing and the plotting itself lacks excitement and suspense. In fact, structurally, the film seems more like a series of elaborate set pieces designed more to show off the special effects than to provide a unified narrative that builds and grows to a cumulative impact. Even worse is that much of the ribald humor of the earlier part disappears as well. Had more of that dry British wit we are treated to in the initial stages been carried all the way through the film, `Harry Potter' might not have come across as quite so flat and attenuated as it does.
On the positive side, Daniel Radcliffe gives a superb performance as Harry, capturing the innate goodness, wide-eyed innocence, and no-nonsense practicality of the character he's been called upon to play. He makes of Harry a very real, very recognizable and very likable young boy. Radcliffe is more than matched in performance by Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as Ron and Hermione, Harry's two finely drawn companions in adventure. It's a pleasure, too, to see the wonderful Maggie Smith doing her Miss Jean Brodie bit again after all these years. No one can convey the brittle starchiness of the English schoolmarm better than she.
`Harry Potter' is also a beautiful looking film, thanks to outstanding cinematography, production design and art direction.
So there you have it: as I said earlier, a decidedly mixed bag of virtues and drawbacks. Those already enamored of little Harry Potter will probably balk at my carping. Those already driven mad by Potter-mania may think I am too indulgent in my overall assessment. But for one who feels little personal stake in the Harry Potter deification/demonization battle, I must say that this is a pretty good film that, I suspect, could have been much better.