harry potter

went to see harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone last night. for the very few among you who don’t already know, i’m a huge fan of the books – my only regret is that my first editions are american and not british versions. so what did i think of the film?

my first response was that, as a shorthand version of the book (i.e., provided you were able to fill in the holes in the story) it was pretty good. but the more i thought about it – and discussed it with my fellow moviegoers (who had not read the books for some unfathomable reason), the more i realized that there’s a lot more wrong with the film than just the fact that you can’t cover every nuance of the story in a movie, even if it is two and a half hours long. what began to bother me the most was that the characters – these characters that are so vivid and beautifully developed in the books – were, in the film, complete unknown quanitities aside from costuming. don’t get me wrong – the casting is excellent and the performances brilliant (particular kudos to alan rickman as severus snape, who even with nothing to go on, script-wise, managed to come off creepy as hell). the film is lovely to look at, and the effects are fun and beautifully managed. there’s just one problem – unless you’ve read the books, you’ve got no clue what the point is.

unless you’ve read the books, you don’t even know the professor mcgonagall is head of gryffindor house. you don’t know what she teaches, either (tranfiguration). you don’t know anything about the discipline or study required to become a witch or wizard. you don’t know professor flitwick’s name, and you never even know that herbology exists. you never meet the overprotective madame pomfrey, and peeves doesn’t even exist. they never even really explain the rules of quidditch, which makes it all look pretty dumb, even if the effects are pretty damned cool. overall, despite the limitations of time and scope dictated by the medium, i believe it’s possible – and in a case like this, critical – to be choosy about what does and doesn’t get included. i think characters – especially in a series like this one – are the crux of everything, and it’s very disappointing to me that they were so underdeveloped.

i really did enjoy the film. i’ll probably even buy the dvd. but i’m going to keep telling people to read the books – preferably *before* they see the movie, even if they never see the movie at all. so all of you: go read them. they’re lovely.

and now i’m off to finish my fourth reading of harry potter and the goblet of fire.