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

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Fri Nov 16 2001 - 13:04:44 PST

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    http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,48466,00.html
       
       Potter Fans Should Love the Film
       By Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
       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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