With wizardly skill, director Chris Columbus has, amazingly, translated the magical quality of J.K. Rowling into film. Go strictly by the book, the Creator said. And Columbus kept faith, not just with Rowling, but with millions of Potter fans the world over. Chances are, the world of their dreams conforms pretty closely with Columbus'. The goblins look like goblins should, Dudley's utterly piggy and the Nimbus 2000 is as close to a thing of beauty as a broomstick can be. Of course, die-hard fans will find themselves searching the film for missing episodes, but completely adapting the book would've more than doubled the length of the film.
The first part of the film is a build-up to Hogwarts, the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It's every bit as wondrous as Rowling's readers would've wanted, or imagined it to be. Shifting staircases, talking portraits, smart-aleck ghosts, floating candles, postal owls...and quidditch. Harry's maiden match against the slimy Slytherins is undisputedly the most spectacular episode in the film stuffed with jaw-dropping sequences. Zip go the bludgers, the quaffle and the snitch, the broomsticks and the players, almost faster than the eye can follow. The casting is as superb as the special effects. If Daniel Radcliffe is The Perfect Harry, Petunia Shaw is The Ugly Aunt personified and Maggie Smith the stern, no-nonsense Professor Minerva McGonagall to life. Richard Harris' genial Albus Dumbledore, while good, makes you wonder how Alec Guinness would've essayed the role of the affable but amazingly-powerful grandmaster of wizardry.
If the film has a flaw, it's that the bad guys aren't bad enough. The dark wizard, Lord Voldemort, is a central presence in the book. He defines Harry—without him, Harry would be just another wizard kid, minus his distinctive scar, struggling with his magic syllabus and dreaming of quidditch glory. Voldemort is almost peripheral in the film, which fails, therefore, to convey a true sense of his evil and the long shadow he casts over Harry's life. It's a box-office smash, generating more gold than the Goblin bank, Gringotts, can hold. Eagerly awaited: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (already in pre-production) and the two films after that, before Daniel Radcliffe and his pals are too old to star in them.
