Welcome
to the magical world of clunky exposition and wooden acting! 'Harry
Potter And The Philosopher's Stone' (changed to "Sorcerer's" in America 'cause they donno de big words) opens up the series, but (mostly
thanks to bad writing and a young target audience) keeps something of
a muzzle on the wizardly universe. I like my fantasy immediately
expansive and initially confusing, I want to be thrown into the
strange to forge my own sense of normality, but maybe that's just me.
There
are a lot of 'Harry Potter' films, and though I am fond of them I'm
not enamoured, so some of these won't be too long. This first one is
a pretty faithful rendition of the book, with few scenes being
omitted (mostly due to the size of the first novel, though also
thanks to the film not really knowing what it is yet). We're watching
a little deer get unsteadily to it's feet here.
The
child actors are all pretty terrible, but they sure are emoting, so
there's that. Their plight isn't helped by the often silly or awkward
dialogue, which results in the odd strained scene. The designs are
great though (I'm mostly thinking architecture - it improves as the
movies go along, the layout of the school in particular changing
quite radically for the third one, but the style is all there already,
and the sets come out of the book well) and despite some of the
scenes playing solely for laughs now (his adopted family and the Hagrid interactions especially) it's still a fun little magical
mystery.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 36.6