Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Review by Jason Gaston

You know, it was pretty magical to be in a screening of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with my two nephews and newly adopted little cousin and have the hundreds of five to ten year olds around me recognizing characters from the book as they appeared on screen. It’s great to know that children are reading again and, therefore, Harry Potter is a godsend for education.

But now they’ve made a movie out of the book so little tykes won’t have to bother with the hassle of reading anymore. Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is about a about a little abused malnourished lad who discovers he’s a wizard and goes off to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There, he lives a grand adventure trying to solve a mystery and save the world.

Okay, folks… don’t get me wrong. I love the British. Any country that can give us Absolutely Fabulous, Red Dwarf, and Monty Python deserves mad props in my book, but so often the British sense of humor favors the dry side. The kind of humor that makes you go “uh-ha-ha-ehh” and that dry wit runs rampant through this movie so much so, that it’s pretty darned pedestrian and boring.

This movie is long, too… Long-winded and long and drawn out. There are so many sequences that run too long or are put in to fill time that just didn’t need to be filled. For example, the big competition thing with the flying balls and the broomsticks – don’t ask me to remember the name of it, was so unnecessary and long, it reminded me of the pod race in Episode One… sure, it was cool and nice to look at, but it served no purpose and only made the movie run longer.

A lot of the movie seemed like separate unrelated sketches stitched together sort of like we were watching Hogwart’s version of Saturday Night Live. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It was rather cute to see classes as Hogwarts, but again… why? I mean, It would have been interesting to see what sort of activities - be them whittling, arts and crafts, or swim school - the kids at Camp Crystal Lake actually did while their counselors were out getting hacked to pieces by Jason… but it really would have dragged the movie down the toilet… or at least as far as a Friday the 13th movie can be dragged down a toilet.

Oh, Harry Potter is cute and, yes, it is a wonder to behold with a lot of originality, but the core story is a boring mess and far too dry to be incredibly appealing.  I'm actually shocked at how dull this movie was.  Seriously shocked.