FC: Harry Potter film review: It's just like the book

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,48466,00.html
   
   Potter Fans Should Love the Film
   By Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
   11:30 a.m. Nov. 16, 2001 PST
   
   Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is less an intrepid cinematic
   undertaking than a painstaking attempt not to vex the book's
   millions of fans.
   
   Few films have ever been as true to their origin: Nearly every dragon,
   goblin and troll who graces J.K. Rowling's insanely popular novel
   flaps, crawls or stomps its way across the big screen version too.
   From the pig tail on the rear of Harry's porcine cousin to Bertie
   Botts Every Flavour Beans, Rowling's whimsical touches have survived
   the transition intact.
   
   By the time Harry crosses the lake to Hogwarts, even the most ardent
   Potterphiles will forget they had ever imagined the book's characters
   looking any other way.
   
   That, combined with the generally splendid special effects, is all
   that should be necessary to transfigure the movie into a magical
   success. While the film may have cost an estimated $150 million, the
   hordes of Muggles and their offspring already queuing up to see it
   should make Harry Potter one of the most profitable movie franchises
   ever.
   
   Yet the price that director Chris Columbus and screenwriter Steve
   Kloves paid for their punctilious adherence to Rowlings' Holy Writ is
   a movie almost as bulky as cake-swilling Dudley: It tilts the
   hourglass at 2 hours, 23 minutes.

   [...]



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