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Candid Reviews of Movies Just Hitting The Big Screen
by Cole Smithey
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
The much-anticipated film version of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone should come with the caution that it sticks so
closely to the book that it loses momentum and paints its superficially
gifted wizard Harry as a fortunate kid without much personality. Although
the movie makes the most of its cheeky British humor and quirky cast of
characters, so much time is spent setting up its vacuous storyline that
the anticlimactic ending lands with a whimper. Robbie Coltrane and Allan
Rickman create memorable characters while young Emma Watson rules the
roost as Hermoine, Harry’s magically superior peer at a Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry. The film’s special effects go from great to
mediocre, especially during the movie’s centerpiece “Quidditch” game,
which makes children riding on broomsticks look like they’re posing in
front of a slide projection.
With its barrage of carefully manicured hype, Harry Potter could
well be the biggest cash cow Hollywood sees this year. But compare it with
France’s biggest blockbuster Amelie, and one can quickly recognize
a split between French and American cinema, which is as different as
Cheese Whiz is to bleu cheese. While both are “feel-good” movies,
Amelie is a far better movie for 12-year-olds because the story is
hinged on respect for conscious will to elevate the self by passion and
fantasy. The meat of Harry Potter dwells strictly in the realm of
fantasy and encourages dreaming over living life to its fullest.
Growing up, I was an avid fan of the “Alfred Hitchcock and The Three
Investigators” book series. I soaked up the adventures of the modern-day
Hardy Boys, savoring every page and writing book reports for my fifth
grade teacher Ms. Golsen every week. No doubt I enjoyed the same kind of
euphoria that kids get from reading the Potter books.
But the child heroes in the Potter movie don’t access any inner depth of
reason or logic to communicate with each other or to crack their
adventure. The three main child characters (Harry, Hermoine, and Ron)
discover and deduce, but they barely bring their personalities to bear on
the paint-by-numbers action at hand. Harry Potter, as an orphaned boy,
seems complacent with his birth-given magical talents rather than willing
to make an effort at improving himself. Harry disregards rules and elders
when it suits his pride, and he goes through life as a heart-on-his-sleeve
victim/hero. He’s kind of an insult to kids-who-wear-glasses because he
never seems to study, doesn’t know any answers in class, and invariably
relies on Hermoine (Emma Watson) to get him out a jam with her knowledge
of spells or her magic wand.
More to the point is that this overlong and tedious cinema product is
being offered as the best thing since peanut butter and jelly. Great care
has gone into creating sets and props that fulfill the whimsy and tone of
the Harry Potter Books, right down to the number of owls in a scene. But
not much care has gone into fulfilling the relationships between the
children and their adult mystical masters at a private college for little
magicians. The problem plays out in subtle ways. Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane -
Goldeneye) is introduced as a capable chaperone to Harry, but he
recedes into the woodwork of the story only to later reveal himself as
none-too-bright bum of sorts. It’s disheartening to see the character
built up to the audience and have that respect stripped away. It’s not so
much that Coltrane is forced to break character than that he has it taken
away from him.
What’s important to the story is that Harry recovers an unimpressive
ruby-like rock called the sorcerer’s stone from the bowels of a castle
dungeon, where it’s protected by a three-headed dog. The fact that Harry’s
lack of interest in the stone’s power enables him to serve as its
liberator gets him off of the hook of having to do any head-scratching
analysis of how to solve the musty mystery.
At two-and-a-half hours long, even the British charm that glues the movie
together starts to wane. Questions of why Harry doesn’t use his wand more
drift into conjecture about restrictions of puberty, and a fire-breathing
baby dragon that Hagrid makes hatch seems like the best scene in the film.
Adult audiences will likely be enchanted to boredom by the start of the
second hour but won’t feel guilty about catching some sleep while their
children watch with wonder in their eyes. |
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