Robbie Coltrane is the gamekeeper, Hagrid, who has a record of misbehavior and a way of saying very important things and then not believing that he said them.Ĭomputers are used, exuberantly, to create a plausible look in the gravity-defying action scenes. Richard Harris is headmaster Dumbledore, his beard so long that in an Edward Lear poem, birds would nest in it. Minerva McGonagall, who assigns newcomers like Harry to one of the school's four houses. Maggie Smith, still in the prime of Miss Jean Brodie, is Prof. Watch Alan Rickman drawing out his words until they seem ready to snap, yet somehow staying in character. There is a broad style of British acting, developed in Christmas pantomimes, which would have been fatal to this material these actors know that, and dial down to just this side of too much. What is good to know is that the adult cast, a who's who of British actors, play their roles more or less as if they believed them. The story you either already know, or do not want to know.

The enemy is Draco Malfoy ( Tom Felton), who will do anything, and plenty besides, to be sure his house places first at the end of the year. The friends are Hermione Granger ( Emma Watson), whose merry face and tangled curls give Harry nudges in the direction of lightening up a little, and Ron Weasley ( Rupert Grint), all pluck, luck and untamed talents. At Hogwarts, Harry makes two friends and an enemy. The school, rising on ominous Gothic battlements from a moonlit lake, looks about as real as Xanadu in ' Citizen Kane,' and its corridors, cellars and great hall, although in some cases making use of real buildings, continue the feeling of an atmospheric book illustration.

Although computers can make anything look realistic, too much realism would be the wrong choice for 'Harry Potter,' which is a story in which everything, including the sets and locations, should look a little made up. Our first glimpse of Hogwarts sets the tone for the movie's special effects. He once played David Copperfield on the BBC, and whether Harry will be the hero of his own life in this story is much in doubt at the beginning.ĭeposited as a foundling on a suburban doorstep, Harry is raised by his aunt and uncle as a poor relation, then summoned by a blizzard of letters to become a student at Hogwarts School, an Oxbridge for magicians. Daniel Radcliffe plays Harry Potter, he with the round glasses, and like all of the young characters he looks much as I imagined him, but a little older. Three high-spirited, clear-eyed kids populate the center of the movie.

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