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This article by Pat Summers was prepared for the November 28, 2001

edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.

At the Movies

At the premiere-day show at 6:30 p.m. on Friday,

November

16, it was like an old-time Saturday matinee: excited kids all over

the place (and popcorn, too) in a general, happy hubbub — and

if hubbubs can be focused, this one was. Some people wore costumes

featuring capes and tall hats; many read a book, the same book, while

waiting in the long, snaking line; still others held stuffed animals

— white owls were rampant.

This would be "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,"

of course, and the show was sold out. Once the lights dimmed and the

feature began, the din immediately stopped, replaced by rapt

attention.

Unaware, or properly unconcerned about reviews being mixed, records

being broken, millions being made and far more anticipated, young

viewers wanted only to see their fictional hero and relive with him

the first adventure, as told by J.K. Rowling in the first of her four

books that have made publishing history.

If you weren’t so wrapped up in the Harry Potter phenomenon yourself,

you could tap in to all those eager little minds anticipating what

comes next, anxious to see how it’s done, and eager to know what this

or that character looks like in the movie. Would it match their

imaginings,

and if not, is that OK?

No wonder 11-year-old Ryan Kelly — who had two Lawrenceville

neighbors share his experience of this first Harry Potter movie, as

he had with the books and his Halloween outing as Potter himself (U.S.

1, November 17, 1999) — mentioned having butterflies in his

stomach.

Given his extensive time investment, including the wait for this

movie,

his butterflies must have been the size of Canada geese.

By now, the world knows all about Harry Potter: At age

11, he is freed from an unhappy life with his awful aunt, uncle, and

cousin to attend Hogwarts, a school for witches and wizards. There

Harry learns why he was orphaned in infancy, and with two good

friends,

continues the fight against the evil wizard — we won’t name him

here — whose early attempt on his young life left a lightning-bolt

scar on Harry’s forehead.

Young Kelly had predicted "lots of special effects" in the

movie, and he was right: the entrance to platform 9-3/4 at King’s

Cross Station, London; the high-speed, high-altitude Quidditch game

played at Hogwarts; "Fluffy," the fierce three-headed dog;

the life-sized and life-threatening wizards’ chess game. Then again,

if a movie about wizards doesn’t call for special effects, what does?

The film is filled with appealing tableaus: Diagon Alley comes right

out of Dickens; the colorfully uniformed Quidditch players resemble

noble knights marching into battle, and the field itself, with posts

and pennants, looks ready for jousting; the Hogwarts banquet hall

suggests a medieval romance. So the conventions are there; only the

basic setting is new.

As for the characters, Kelly was happy with Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid,

Hogwarts’ giant game keeper, even though he was shorter than expected,

and he found Alan Rickman’s Professor Snape "chubbier" than

his imaginings, but otherwise effective. Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley

was just fine with Kelly, and although he had thought Hermione would

"wear glasses and be more of a nerd," he stopped short of

agreeing with us that Emma Watson was just too pretty for the role.

Daniel Radcliffe satisfied as Harry, even though his hair didn’t stick

up and his off-center jagged scar came as a surprise. Overall, Kelly

gave this cast the green light for the six Potter movies yet to come.

And he was less literal than his companions — both about plot

compressions and omissions, probably made to keep the length

manageable,

and about our hero’s eye color. In the books, Harry is emphatically

green-eyed; Radcliffe’s eyes are a pretty, but somehow less spirited,

blue — much like his rendering of the Potter role: too often

demurely

passive. As is the case with Dante’s Satan, Draco Malfoy, Potter’s

student nemesis, is the more interesting character to watch. Blonds

really do have more fun.

Kelly thought the scene with the silver-blooded unicorn and the

centaur

"pretty cool." And he liked "how they suspected Snape,

when actually it was (name concealed to protect the guilty)."

And that created a teaching moment, one ripe for "red

herrings."

"Basically, it was perfect," Kelly determined, awarding

"Harry

Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" a critic’s A-plus. On a practical

level, Kelly advises having snacks with the movie.

Two-and-a-half-hours

is a long time, and those butterflies must be fed.

— Pat Summers

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