Harry Potter and the philosopher's Stone
Dir Christopher Columbus
2001 PG
Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone
features the titular Harry Potter, a boy wizard who is
summoned to a literally magic school for promising wizards
(and witches.) This movie is excellent on the level of
a kiddie's flick, as far as I can guess at 33 years. (My
mental age is sub-teens mind you.) The little brats in
the seats behind me pummelled me with popcorn. I was able
to recover some of their ammo and fire it back. Despite
my lethal aim I didn't cause any injures. Unfortunately.
Anyway, the bombardment ceased during the movie, so at
the very least the movie held their interest more than
their assault on me.
Speaking with my grown-up hat on - bugger, it doesn't
fit -
Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone
is more or less bearable as fluffy entertainment. I saw
it out of curiosity, to find out about this megahyped
Harry Potter geezer. I'm ashamed to say it, but
hype got me into that wretched cinema. I had heard
some vague buzz that the movie was OK, though.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone
has some neat CGI, some awful CGI and the sublimely villainous
Alan Rickman. But what bothered me is that the bad guys
were obviously brighter than the good guys (no surprise
there then) with the insinuation that nous and intelligence
are somehow opposed to goodness. Harry himself was a trustworthy
goody-two-shoes, but not the brightest gamma-ray burster
in the Universe. Here is an example: At once point in
the movie, a baddie kid and harry face a situation about
as dangerous as leaping out of a plane sans parachute.
The baddie kid flees from certain death. Harry stood his
ground and sure enough was nearly killed were he not saved
by a convenient coincidence. The movie criticised the
perfectly sensible action of the baddie kid as cowardice,
and the monumentally suicidal instinct of the dim Harry
as heroism. And this movie is about wisdom? Hello?
Many people really do equate stupidity with goodness,
which is highly ironic as in reality 99% of villains are
as thick as pig shit. (OK, that statistic is pulled out
of thin air, but I bet it's not far out.)
I didn't particularly savour the nauseating favouritism
lavished upon Harry and perfectly sympathised with that
blond kid for hating the little shit. OK, so his parents
were murdered by the dastardly Voldemorte dude, but sympathy
- not reverence - are the wages of orphanship.
A nice touch were those horrid grasping goblins at Gringotts.
What a beautiful satire of the bitter jobsworths whose
pointless lives are dedicated to making life difficult
for the very people they are supposed to serve. We all
know the type, they infest the managerial and bureaucratic
worlds. Next time you see your bank manager, think of
the goblins of Gringotts and I challenge you not to indulge
a wry smile.
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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I didn't much care for the
troll in this - or the troll in
Lord Of The Rings for that matter. Trolls should
be formidable and have scary as shit faces. Meddle
in the affairs of trolls and expect a messy death!
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's
Stone stuck closely to the book apparently (I haven't
read it and never will) but the movie would have
been wise to have taken a few liberties. I'm not
a "movie should be faithful to the book"
man myself and the "it was love wot did it"
ending sucked lemons through nanotubes.
Since when has being nice
prevented wanton crime? Imagine it, "Please
don't steal my mobile, Mr Mugger, coz I'm really
nice person." Scum recognise and respect
neither nice nor love. Liberal adults (in this case
through the medium of moves and books) love to patronise
and bullshit kids. Then they wonder why the kids,
when grown to teenagers, hate their lousy guts.
Incidentally, I was cheering
on Ravenscraw, or whatever the "baddie"
house was, all the way. Better luck next time dudes.
In a nice twist, if it wasn't for the Rickman character,
Potter would have been face down in shit in that
sports day game. Yet Harry stole all the credit.
Oh well. Ravenscraw were robbed!
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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The troll ate them all.
Add your comment to this page
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| From: |
soph | Subject: | 2004-11-20 17:31:51 |
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| From: |
RYAN | Subject: | 2006-02-09 12:08:04 |
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