Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

When I originally watched the film in theaters, I remember being in love with every single aspect of it. It was like the director, Chris Columbus, knew how I had imagined everything. I had watched all of his other blockbusters, like ''Gremlins,'' ''Home Alone'' movies, and ''Mrs. Doubtfire.” I feel like each time I watched these classics, I would see something I had not noticed before or a line would hit me a different way. I watched “Mrs. Doubtfire” at least 200 times, and when I visited San Francisco, I could not pass up visiting the house.  So, for him to adapt this film from my favorite book, I could not be any more excited. I also feel that a lot could have gone wrong in the movie, but due to the faithfulness to the novel and the amazing special effects, this became an enchanting classic. Chris Columbus could have made the story cute and cuddly, but instead he achieved an "Indiana Jones" for my generation. There was a clear element of danger that pervaded the film, but it was not too scary and certainly not scarier than the real world. 

The casting was terrific. It seemed like they had hired every single British actor they could find. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter, with the round glasses taped in the middle, was just how imagined him as I read the series. Harry’s best friends Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), whose sweet countenance and messy curls encourage Harry to loosen up and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), who is the guy’s gut with luck and untamed talents. Harry’s menacing platinum blonde arch nemesis is Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), who will do anything to elevate his egotism to the greatest height by the year’s end. There has never been a kid who got so much joy out of saying his oddball name. How they managed to get Hagrid to look so gigantic is still beyond me, but he was certainly a great pick. Then there was the who’s who of British actors including Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith), Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris), and Severus Snape (Alan Rickman just embodies the sneering type with his long drawn out words) were all spot on.

From the opening scene of the suburban Privet Drive to just before Harry’s arrival on the steps of Hogwarts, the entire experience was very realistic with tangible textures of the busy zoo, shack on the rock, and the bustling train station. This mundane setting helps the audience ease into the fantastic. It was not until the first glimpse of Hogwarts that the movie began to use special effects. It was just enough realistic to make the fantastic believable. As the castle rises from the ominous Gothic battlements from a moonlit lake, it emits an eerie realness that caters to the atmospheric book illustration. Computers were used to make the gravity-defying action scenes, like the intense game of Quidditch look plausible. Readers of the book will wonder how the movie visualizes the crucial game of Quidditch. Then there is the chess game with CGI life-sized deadly pieces, a room filled with flying keys, a three headed dog, and the mysterious dark forest with the ever lurking loathsome creature that threatens Harry but is scared away by a centaur. The moving pictures, hidden passages, and the invisibility cloak were just true works of marksmanship. The beauty was certainly in the details of the set.

However, there was one aspect that I did not care for in this film adaption. It is quite troublesome that at a time when London is abundant with all shades of melanin, there seems to only be white actors. Although it does not explicitly say in the books which faces are colored, most imagination automatically correct for that. Somehow, Harry's gorgeous owl, Hedwig, who is snow white with dark sunken eyes and feather tails dappled with black, gets more screen time than the minorities do. Chris Columbus does attempt to give a couple of lines to a little boy with a head full of dreadlocks. I found this sidelined minority status particularly offensive, because this was a film whose target audience is kids.

All in all, I could not be in more love with the film "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I knew I was watching a classic, one that will be around for a long time and is played during every ABC Family’s 25 days of Christmas, and will continue to make many more generations of fans. Thankfully this first film set the bar high and did not take the lazy and cheap way out. Also since the casting was so wisely chosen, character development occurs as the movie goes on giving a depth and reality to the goofy names. This film reaches the classic category alongside “The Wizard of Oz," "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings," because it is not just a movie, but a fantastic world with its own magical rules.