What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this first movie in the Harry
Potter series has some intense and scary moments. Harry Potter
and friends -- who are only 11 years old here -- are in peril
and get hurt, but not seriously, and most of the scares come
from fantasy creatures. There's a flashback to the (bloodless)
death of Harry's parents and discussion about how they died and
the one who killed them.
Families can talk about the Harry Potter series. Do you like the books or movies better? Who are your favorite characters? What themes from the first in the series pop up again in later installments? Why is the scene with Dudley and the snake important? If you got to choose an animal your first year at Hogwarts (owl, toad, cat, or rat) which would you bring? If your whole family was sorted into houses, who would be where? Would you be in the same house like the Weasleys or split up into different houses?
Common Sense Media Review
HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE is filled with visual
splendor, valiant heroes, spectacular special effects, and
irresistible characters. It's only fair to say that it's truly
magical.
Fanatical fans of the books (in other words, just about everyone who has read them) were thrilled with the film's release in 2001 and a mighty movie series was born.
Of course fans of the books have to prepare themselves for the fact that no movie could possibly fit in all of the endlessly inventive details author J.K. Rowling includes, and not even a big-budget movie with the best CGI wizards can match the imagination of readers who have their own ideas about how Professor McGonagall turns into a cat or a dragon hatches from an egg. Move all of that over into a safe storage part of your brain and settle back with those who are brand-new to the story to enjoy the way that screenwriter Steven Kloves, production designer Stuart Craig, and director Chris Columbus have brought their vision of the story to the screen.
Harry ( Daniel Radcliffe), of course, is the orphan who lives with the odious Dursleys, his aunt, uncle, and cousin. They make him sleep in a cupboard under the stairs and never show him any attention or affection. On his 11th birthday, he receives a mysterious letter, but his uncle destroys it before he can read it.
Letters keep coming, and the Dursleys panic and hide away on a remote island. But they're found Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), a huge, bearded man with a weakness for scary-looking creatures. It turns out that the letters were coming from Hogwarts, a boarding school for young witches and wizards, and Harry is expected for the fall term.
Hagrid takes Harry to buy his school supplies in Diagon Alley, a small corner of London that, like so much of the magic world, exists near but apart from the world of the muggles (humans). We are thus treated to one of the most imaginative and engaging settings ever committed to film, mixing the London of Dickens and Peter Pan with sheer, bewitching fantasy. A winding street that looks like it's hundreds of years old holds a bank run by goblins, a place to buy a pet owl, a store where the wand picks the wizard, and a pub filled with an assortment of curious characters.
