Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE

Rating: B

Summary: Some interesting scenes sprinkled here and there, but generally lacking in emotional impact.

The first fifteen minutes of this movie genuinely suck. Young Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is shown growing up in a foster home, where his foster parents make him do menial chores while they focus their affection on their fat, spoiled brat real son. If this tired setup doesn't inspire you to lean back and try to catch a snooze, throw in the fact the level of humor is aimed squarely at three-year-olds with attention deficit disorder. It's times like these that you wish you'd bought the large size popcorn just to have something to do for the next two hours.

Fortunately, once Harry escapes the clutches of his family of morons, the movie spreads its wings and takes to the air. As he rides a train bound for the school of magic, he befriends fellow freshmen Rupert Grint and Emma Watson. Considering all three actors are quite young, they turn in convincing performances. Grint plays the awkward kid who always befriends the hero in every movie about kids at a boarding school. Watson plays the slightly prissy, precocious young girl who knows the answers in class and presumably submits her homework in triplicate. That director Chris Columbus succeeds in making their interactions believable and interesting is one of the saving graces of this film.

The one thing the film sorely lacks is focus. Fancy effects, such as a computer-animated giant troll and a centaur, are haphazardly thrown into the plot with no real reason for being there. They come out of nowhere for one scene, then disappear as suddenly, never to be heard from again. Likewise, an extended sequence where the boys engage in "quidditch," a sport played while flying through the air on broomsticks, is simply tiresome to watch. Much attention is focused on the extravagant visual effects, but because the rules of the game are so arbitrary and devoid of logic, there's no drama in watching it. If quidditch matches were televised, more kids would do their homework.

By the time Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone nears its end, the film is a pile of missed opportunities - of situations which could have turned into something memorable but fizzled instead. And although there's an inspired scene where the kids find themselves embroiled in a life-sized game of chess, the climax itself is curiously anti-climactic. Like much of the rest of the movie, it's full of sound and fury but devoid of any real impact. You'll wonder what all the fuss is about.