HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE:
MOVIE REVIEW EXCERPTS

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The verdicts are coming in: critics are pleased with what Chris Columbus, Steve Kloves and the others in the Sorcerer's Stone production crew have done to J.K. Rowling's book. So far, they have cited the filmmakers for faithfulness to the literary materials, strong performances from the cast, and good special effects. Heck, there's been only one bad review so far (see bottom of page). Even Rowling herself is saying nice stuff about the movie (see the Reuters story at the bottom of the page).

Overused comparisons: Saying the Quidditch match is as suspenseful and well-filmed as the pod race in Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace, and saying that Daniel Radcliffe resembles Anne Robinson, cold-hearted host of The Weakest Link game show in both United States and Great Britain.

Some of the most glowing reviews came from THE BRITISH PRESS! Does this imply that these UK critics are pleased with Hollywood's interpretation of one of their native works of literature? At least for some of them.

Read the excerpts below, and click on the authors' names to see the full reviews. The latest reviews added are marked with three purple asterisks (font color="purple">***").

POSITIVE REVIEWS

"Now it can be told: with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- the first film in what Warner Bros. hopes will be a long and profitable franchise -- director Chris Columbus has bravely gone toe to toe with the imaginations of readers who have purchased 100 million Potter books and made the boy wizard one of the most beloved figures in literary history. ... The big-screen adaptation is a film of such eye-popping grandeur, dazzling special effects and sumptuous production values that you may not notice right away that supporting characters like Peeves, a troublesome ghost, and Piers, a troublesome boy, have been given the heave-ho."
--Jess Cagle, Time Magazine

"Practically every character and detail in the book is on the screen, sometimes realized brilliantly, from Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback dragon and Hagrid, the gentle giant who loves him, to the giant living chess match, Dumbledore the Headmaster (looking like Obi Wan Santa Claus here), the goblin-bankers, the trolls, unicorns and centaurs that populate Rowling's extremely popular universe."
--Phil Kloer, Cox News Service

"It is a rare thing for a movie based on a novel to capture the spirit and magic contained in those, to many, sacred pages. It is ever more rare for such a movie to capture that magic and add some of it's own. Harry Potter manages to do both, much to my delight ... My fears at the thought of Columbus behind the camera were banished from the opening scene. He doesn't show us the world of Harry Potter, he creates it! Never before have the images I create in my head when reading a book been so faithfully brought to life on film. Everything was exactly as I pictured it. The set design is nothing short of breathtaking and the cinematography is beautiful. The Quidditch match sequence rivals the Pod Race from Episode I not only in visual effects, but for sheer exciting entertainment. It rocks!!!! Not all of the effects were spectacular (the troll sequence) but the majority of them are seamless and look great."
--"Ender," reviewer for Dark Horizons

"Right off the bat, let me tell all of you that Harry Potter & The Sorcer's Stone is an absolutely outstanding movie. It exceeded all my expectations. Neither a movie overly loaded with action or comedy, the film plays out like a well written book with lots of character and English charm. Even with all the outstanding special effects in this film, the story and characters still remain the focal point, and this is the kind of filmmaking that we seldom see these days -- the kind of film that even George Lucas couldn't pull off."
--Ronald Epstein, Home Theater Forum.com

"This film was an exciting two-and-a-half hour adventure ... Dan Radcliffe does a great job as Harry. A big part of his job was to 'react' to the situations taking place all around him ('I'm a wizard?','My parents were murdered?!','There's a wizard school?', 'I'm famous?!' and so on). I'm amazed how much restraint he shows throuhg a lot of the time. ... Rickman is exactly as I imagined Snape to be. He's intimidating, shrewd, cruel and truly scary when he talks quietly."
--"Cygnus X-2," Writing to Ain't It Cool News.com

"The film was downright gorgeous! Fantastic! A masterpiece! A New York Times reviewer once claimed that the Harry Potter books were 'destined for greatness.' I say the same thing about this movie."
--Dave R., writing to Entertainment Rewired

"HARRY POTTER'S here at last! And the good news is director Chris Columbus has conjured up a little bit of movie magic. ... The movie boasts more fine performances than you could wave a wand at. ... The film is jam-packed with great magic sequences that are so well filmed it makes you think the special effects boys trained at Hogwarts themselves." --Neil Roberts, The Sun (UK)

"Many set-pieces ­-- the Quidditch match especially --­ are conducted with speed and extraordinary violence, as if aimed at the vital teenage multiplex audience. Some of the more terrifying moments made me jump out of my seat and would surely traumatise unsuspecting six and seven-year-olds. But there is much to enjoy in this headlong extravaganza. There are fights and frights and beardy-wizardy wisdom from Robert Harris as the ancient headmaster Dumbledore, and a fantastically bombastic score from John Williams."
--John Walsh, The Independent (UK)

"From the opening scene, in which an owl flaps slowly down Privet Drive as Professor Dumbledore (Richard Harris) and Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith, sounding remarkably like Miss Jean Brodie) await the arrival of kindly giant Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) with the infant Harry, we know that we are in good hands."
--John Hiscock, The Telegraph (UK)

***"So is the movie good? Well, if you were hoping this wizard was from Oz you'll be disappointed. But if your aspirations soar no higher than Willy Wonka's glass elevator (and that's pretty high), then you'll be kicking up your heels with wizardly glee. At almost two-and-a-half hours, this movie's a little flabby around the middle, but so is my kitty cat and I love her. Harry Potter gets my wand a-waving."
--Mark Ramsey, MovieJuce.com

"Perhaps the magic should be credited to director Chris Columbus. This is not a great movie, but it is a very good one. That's quite an accomplishment in light of the parameters forced upon him: He had to make a movie that works on its own terms for viewers who aren't familiar with the book, while appeasing the legion of Harry devotees who consider the source material the Holy Grail of kid lit."
--Jeff Stickler, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"During Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I was pretty sure I was watching a classic, one that will be around for a long time, and make many generations of fans. It takes the time to be good. It doesn't hammer the audience with easy thrills, but cares to tell a story, and to create its characters carefully. Like The Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Star Wars and E.T., it isn't just a movie but a world with its own magical rules. And some excellent Quidditch players."
--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Just about every kid is going to want to see this long-awaited movie. Most of them will be pleased. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone doesn't deepen our appreciation of the book, as a great movie adaptation such as James and the Giant Peach or The Little Princess does, but it doesn't trash it, either, as The Grinch did. Harry is a handsome, faithful, cautious film that delivers in most of the ways you'd hope it would."
--Chris Hewitt, St. Paul Pioneer-Press (Minnesota)

"Scrupulous in design, faithful in execution and boasting a near-perfect cast of faces new and old, it will delight the many who want the big screen to match the images they have in mind of boy wizard Harry and his friends and foes at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
--Peter Howell, Toronto Star

"If every movie that's greedily earmarked as a cinematic franchise could be as immaculately conceived as Chris Columbus' "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," there would be no reason to complain about the crass commercialization of films. This movie -- based on the first book in J.K. Rowling's phenomenally successful series -- is anything but crass. Lovingly designed by Columbus, screenwriter Steve Kloves and their team with a dark, burnished, broad-shouldered look, the film fairly drips with intelligence and the appearance of substance."
--Joe Baltake, Sacramento Bee

"This movie is bound to delight millions of kids and start passionate arguments about details, and it's not going to embarrass their parents, either. Just about every time the magic seems to be wearing thin, something astonishing is sure to occur."
--Bob Graham, San Francisco Chronicle

MIXED (SOME GOOD & SOME BAD)

"I may be too harsh on a film that doubtless will satisfy tens of millions of Harry Potter fans, but Sorcerer's Stone often has the feel of a manufactured object, a replica, not a living, breathing thing. In fact, its almost reverent attention to detail might be exactly what keeps it from soaring. The film seems to spend a lot of time looking nervously over its shoulder at the book and at the watchful figure of Rowling herself."
--Jay Carr, The Boston Globe <

"Fear of alienating fans of the young wizard and his creator J.K. Rowling has turned director Chris Columbus into a visual stenographer. As a result, the only feathers likely to be ruffled by this sweet film are at Eeylops Owl Emporium. And that is probably as it should be. Columbus, director of Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire, has a slick and commercial instinct that brings little to this juvenile epic about an orphan boy who learns he is a wizard that Rowling hasn't already delivered."
--Duane Dudek, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

"By adhering to the same structure as the novel, Columbus has made a movie that won't disappoint audiences who want the book in their head to play out on the screen (even if it doesn't get up a full head of steam until the last half hour), but which hardly fulfills its potential as film. He was, though, under an impossible burden -- which included making a book into a movie without tampering with the book."
--John Anderson, Newsday (Long Island, New York)

"While Columbus blunders forth at the same measured pace for both quiet and action scenes, he still manages to capture the book's spell, which hinges on the fact that no matter how worthless one might feel, we all have special powers within ourselves, and everything could be changed in a heartbeat by a magic letter arriving via owl post. A more subtle or imaginative director (Joe Dante? Terry Gilliam? Tim Burton?) might have elevated the film to greatness, but Kloves and Columbus pull a highly entertaining movie from a silk hat that I was sure was empty."
--Jeffrey M. Anderson, San Francisco Examiner

"Director Chris Columbus will never discover a new world of cinema. But he made one mass-appeal classic ("Home Alone"), and now a better one. His very British film, adapted from Rowling's first Potter book by the smart American scripter Steve Kloves, doesn't seem like another theme park rigged for merchandising, even though such a park forms the hub of it -- the Hogwarts School, a sort of Xanadu Eton where young Harry Potter is, at 11, whisked to learn the wizard arts for which he has a born aptitude."
--David Elliott, San Diego Union-Tribune

"The new, much-anticipated movie is a faithful, literal, only mildly imaginative rendering of that book. While no disgrace, it is certainly no classic, like, say, the movie of The Wizard of Oz. Kids who loved Rowling's 1997 book (the first in a projected series of seven, of which four have been published) will get a big kick out of seeing it up on the Silver Screen. But most of the magic in the new film is on loan from Rowling."
--Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel

"All of these fine actors and more perform their duties professionally, but like everything else about the movie, they seem overwhelmed by the sheer, event-media sensibility that permeates the proceedings. Ironically, the movie soars into spontaneous-feeling flights of cinematic exhilaration only when assisted by the most extensive computer graphics."
----Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News

"If you haven't gotten a sense of it, this adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone tries to squeeze in so much of the novel that all the supporting character are sorely underdeveloped as characters. Only Hagrid has much to do in this tale since he explains all of it to the wide eyed trio of kidlets. What Steve Kloves' adapted script does, had you not read the book ... is deliver a pale imitation of Star Wars."
--Chuck Schwartz, "The Cranky Critic," CrankyCritic.com

"Columbus was right to shoot the movie in England, and to summon the kind of character actors in which that nation has always specialized; they are like counties, or provincial parishes, made flesh. His feeling for voices, though, and for the social positioning of his characters, seems less than secure, and you sense that some of the performers are taking the enterprise more lightly than others."
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

"While satisfying on the basic level of 'Look, there’s Nearly Headless Nick! There’s Professor Flitwick!' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone never really unearths the wonderful film that is so clearly in J.K. Rowling’s book. Just like the subtle clues she leaves hiding in plain sight throughout the series, that film is definitely in there, staring us in the face. But the mystery wasn’t unlocked this time. Maybe The Chamber of Secrets will get it right."
--Kyle Gilman, Jiminy Critic.com

***"Working from a solid script by ace screenwriter Steve Kloves (Wonder Boys), Columbus fares best when he stays close to his wry, sweet-natured hero and tells the story through his bespectacled eyes. Defying an unhappy cinematic tradition of bowl-haired moppets, Daniel Radcliffe gives a modest and winning performance as Potter, an orphaned boy who has spent the last 10 years living under the stairs of his adoptive parents' house, unaware of his grand destiny. ... More Potter movies are in the pipeline, but the franchise seems exhausted halfway through the first."
--Scott Tobias, Onion A.V. Club

***""Fidelity ... is a virtue more crucial to marriage than movies. There are good reasons why filmmakers think it necessary to reshape the books that inspire them. Columbus’s Harry Potter has many delights, but the magical alchemy that the book seemed to achieve so effortlessly eludes it. The movie gets most of the book’s events in, but loses much of the lightness and charm of Rowling’s vision. ... Columbus stays true to the tale’s English flavor, but he can’t resist the Hollywood temptation to pump everything up a notch, starting with the overly broad awfulness of Harry’s adopted family."
--David Ansen, Newsweek

NEGATIVE REVIEWS

"My rating of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is 2 1/2 out of 4 stars. The movie was OK, but the book was butchered to a point that almost made me want to leave halfway through. ... The movie was also a typical Christopher Columbus film. He added his dumb, pointless lines in many scenes. He also got his usual bad child actor for the film."
--Jules Anthony Monteyne, on Dark Mark.com

J.K. ROWLING'S OPINION

2 NOVEMBER 2001

By Paul Majendie
Reuters

KNEBWORTH, England -- Seeing the film of her first Harry Potter book reduced author J.K. Rowling to tears -- she just loved it.

"I am enormously relieved," the author said after seeing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for the first time at a private screening.

And she gave full marks to 12-year-old child actor Daniel Radcliffe who plays the bespectacled boy wizard in one of the most eagerly awaited films of the year.

"I think Dan nailed it -- and I am really pleased, I just love his face. He has such an endearing face," she said.

That was praise indeed from the millionaire novelist who kept resisting pleas from Hollywood until she felt they had found the right director in Christopher Columbus, who had worldwide hits with Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire.

Rowling said Columbus promised her two things, "That he would remain as faithful to the book as he possibly could within the constraints of film and he promised me he would have an all-British cast. He kept both promises, and so I was a happy woman."

The novelist, a single mother who started writing the novels in an Edinburgh cafe after dropping her daughter off at school, has become a global publishing phenomenon -- the four books have sold more than 100 million copies in 46 languages.

But she was always nervous that the on-screen version would not match the imagination of children around the world.

That was why producer David Heyman breathed such a huge sigh of relief after she watched the film with him at a private screening Sunday at Warner Bros. in London.

Heyman told Reuters "She came across the aisle, sat down and put her arms around me. Her eyes were tear-stained. She said, 'I loved it. Thank you.'"

And then Rowling was swift to put out a statement to reporters spelling out her gut reaction to seeing up on the silver screen what has been inside her head for so long.

"What was most moving to me was to see certain scenes," she said, reflecting on the two-and-a-half-hour movie.

"Admittedly, I had been given a lot of input on how things looked. But they really do look as I'd imagined they would inside my head," Rowling said. "From my point of view, it is obviously wonderful."

Columbus, talking to Reuters at a pre-premiere gathering for international reporters at a 15th century stately home north of London, said the opportunity to quiz the author and get into her imagination was invaluable while he was making the film.

"If I had been doing Dracula, it would have been great to interview Bram Stoker," the 43-year-old director said.

Rowling's first choice was to have larger-than-life British actor Robbie Coltrane playing the friendly giant Hagrid at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"He was, I'd say, the top of my list in the dream cast," Rowling said. "Robbie is just perfect for Hagrid."