Harry Potter Reviews: Philosopher's Stone

There is a month left until the final Harry Potter movie, Deathly Hallows Part 2, is released so I have decided to post my own reviews of each of the Harry Potter books and their movie adaptations. At the beginning of each of the reviews I'll post a brief for those who haven't read the books or watched the movies or aren't sold on the whole Harry Potter thing. These will be as spoiler free as possible. The next section will contain spoilers as I run through some of my regrets and rate the book and movie according to the world-building meter.

Without further ado, my brief review of the first Harry Potter installment: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone:

Brief: 

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first book in the Harry Potter Series, introduces us to a young Orphan, Harry, who is mistreated by his Aunt and Uncle and bullied by his pampered cousin. Strange things happen to Harry, things that infuriate Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and make their treatment of him grow, if possible, even worse. They seem to be afraid of something, a fear which remains and possibly intensifies throughout the series, as Harry discovers, and embraces, the fact that he is a Wizard.

The first book introduces us to the Wizarding World through the eyes of the newcomer Harry. We see it through a child's eyes – a child who is absolutely amazed by everything he sees and who grows to fall in love with this world, the world which offered him an escape from the mistreatment he faced at the Dursley's.

This book is a children's book, but that hasn't stopped hundreds of adults from falling in love with the Wizarding world along with Harry. This is because the setting is so vivid and the characters so realistic that you want to visit the world again and again. I discovered the books about a year before the movie came out, so for me the movie was a great way of seeing the world and the characters come to life. It was a very faithful movie adaptation that has, for me, become synonymous with the original book.

If you're one of those people who aren't sold on the idea of Harry Potter, or if you still think it's for children, then I would recommend just watching the first two movies so you can understand what happened and skipping straight to book 3. After you get hooked on the books there will be ample time to go back and catch up on the things you missed.

Movie Regrets: (SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT)

As I said, this movie is so faithful that I consider it synonymous with the book. This means that I have very few regrets. There are, however, a couple of things that they left out of the movie which I had been looking forward to seeing on the big screen:

- Harry's accidental magic: other than making the glass at the zoo disappear and talking to the snake we didn't see much of the magic that Harry does, like ending up on the roof, his hair growing back very quickly, etc.

- The rollercoaster ride at Gringotts (it looks like this is going to be in the final movie, though, which is awesome!)

- Neville being with them when they see Fluffy and in the Forest

- Norbert being smuggled to Charlie's friends

- Snape's Logic puzzle obstacle (it would have highlighted the fact that Snape was helping protect the stone, not trying to steal it, plus more Snape is always a good thing!)

These regrets weren't big enough that I disliked the movie or anything. I accepted them because you can't expect a movie adaptation to be 100% the same as the book, and it was otherwise excellent, so really no complaints about it.

World-Building Rating:

This book provides an excellent introduction to the Wizarding world. I would rate this one somewhere between Awesome and Great. It was awesome enough to make me want to read the other books, but not as awesome as subsequent books with their rich detail and humour.

Great details include the spells and magical objects we see, the ghosts and Peeves, the Forbidden Forest and Fluffy, and the Troll and the Unicorn-blood thing. These details give us the sense that the world is much bigger and much less safe and comfortable than our own. I also loved the kind of school that Hogwarts is, after all, who wouldn't want to go to Hogwarts and learn to fly instead of going to public school and learning to follow rules and copy notes? The books can be seen as a commentary on schooling and education, in my opinion, if you compare teachers like Binns and Snape and McGonagall and then compare them to the teachers we've all had in school.