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Review: Harry Potter
I'm a latecomer to the Harry Potter phenomenon. A few friends recommended the books to me, but it wasn't until the local town of Zeeland, Michigan decided to push to have the book banned from school libraries and local book stores that I decided I had to read it. I read the first book and was just amazed. Here was a story that was fun, easy to read, had involving characters and a simply wonderful imagination. Quite simply, "The Hype" was warranted. In this era of the Internet, and playstations and old fashioned TV, this was just the book to get kids reading again. Hell, this was just the book to get me reading again. My schedule doesn't give me much free time to enjoy a book, but I made time, and read the first 3 Harry Potter books on my next 3 flights (I'm saving the 4th book for next time I fly ;) I don't read much. But I'm glad I read these books. They were great.
Of course by this time, the movie was already under construction so I kept a stray eyeball on it to see what would come of it. I wept when I heard Chris Columbus was directing (Home Alone? Mrs. Doubtfire? Stab me please). Why not Terry Gilliam? I thought he would have been perfect, except that I have no clue if the man could direct swarms of kids. Columbus could. And I'm glad to say that he did.
I won't belabor the plot. You know already unless you live in a coffin that Harry Potter is the witch hero brought from the world of Muggles to his true destiny at Hogwarts, a traditional English boarding school ... for witches. He meets up with a variety of friends including the giant Hagrid, the little-miss-perfect Hermione, the Headmaster Dumbledore, his best friend Ron. He also meets some bad guys, Professor Snape (played by Alan Rickman, who I always dig), Draco Malfoy. If you've read the book, you know the characters. If you haven't, you either don't care, or haven't been paying attention to every AOL Time Warner media outlet which has been relentless hyping the film for weeks.
The story is simply epic. Orphan Boy learns of true powers. Boy goes to train to master his powers. Boy fights monsters, comes face to face with true evil, and defeats it. Think Star Wars, but with broom sports instead of x-wing battles.
The kids are dead on. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are almost exactly what I'd expect. They are convincing actors and do an excellent job. And they actually act. Not like Phantom Menace where Jake Lloyd brings every scene featuring his dialog to a crashing halt with his wooden delivery, or The 6th Sense's Haley Joel Osment who just has to make that look at the camera half the time and this is somehow interpreted as being a great child actor. The grownups are good too. Robbie Coltrane's Hagrid is really excellent. Likewise the Dursley's are spot on. I would have liked to get a bit more of the teachers. Especially Dumbledore and Snape, but this is the story of the kids, not the grown-ups.
Since this is a special FX blockbuster kind of movie, I'll go into it a bit. The look of the whole movie is dazzling. The casting is right on the money. The architecture is skewed and bent, just like it should be. Hogwarts itself is dark, but the grounds are beautiful and colorful. Everybody visualizes books differently, but I gotta say they did a fine job creating a convincing world for our magical trio to get into mischief.
Many of the effects are subtle and seemlessly integrated. Keep an eye on the paintings and watch them move in the background. Where the effects really collapse is the people during action sequences. The troll battle. Kids falling off brooms. They cut back and forth between real kids and CGI kids. And the CG kids just don't cut it. They just look wooden and their skin has no flesh texture to it. Most of the shots are short, but at least for me they really pulled me out of the fun. Especially during the Quiditch match. I wanted to cheer and be excited, and certainly the seen as a whole was brilliant. But every couple shots it would be so obvious that the child on the broom was animated that I kept having the illusion spoiled. I kept thinking I was watching a Playstation 2 cut sequence instead of a feature film.
What got sacrificed from the book to make this a 2:30 movie? Well not much. The biggest thing is the details in classes. The books love to have little anecdotal stories in classes that often tie together at the end. A spell. Some child doing something that seems irrelevant, but later matters. But the kids are almost never shown in class. But thats ok. Things also seemed a little more slapsticky, but I guess Mr Home Alone couldn't pass up on that. And I'll forgive him. This is a kids movie. A few sub plots are axed. Many plots are narrowed down (notably the dragon sub plot which is reduced to one short scene)
In short, this the best for-all-ages movie I've seen since perhaps Toy Story 2. And I'll be there opening night for The Chamber of Secrets too.
He's right about the books and the movie. I just wish the kid target demographic hadn't limited the length of the movie so. Another half hour would have done wonders. Oh well, maybe a "director's cut".
1Alpha7
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Because Terry Gilliam has imagination and originality.
The publisher and/or the studio wanted the film of the book to be a word-for-word replica.
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But until Harry Potter is on your completed reading list, it is impossible to truly understand. While maybe they are not the best written books ever, there is something else about them that takes children into this magical world, and then can take adults back to being children. I urge everyone, if its your thing or not, to try reading these books, and then the movie will really be impressive.
Then do what we're doing -- check them out from the public library.
We and our 8 yr old enjoyed it a great deal but I was rather surprised that the theatre was clearly less than full (even though it was a day that all the kids were out of school -- we showed up about 15 mins before starting time thinking we'd have to get tickets for at least the next show, but we walked right in and got good seats in the middle!
Judging from news reports I'm guessing that's an anomoly.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
The one reason I wont see the movie is i doubt it has those "adult jokes" like all of Pixar's movies have. You know, the sruff for the older crowd in the movie, thew stuff that flies over the kid's head.
you're kidding right?
Highschool kids reading Harry Potter? Isn't that a little... well... beneath their reading level? Whatever happened to Antigony and Wuthering Heights? Even my twelve year old brother was bored by the books (and certainly not challenged by them) when he first started reading them a couple years ago.
No wonder kids are so stupid these days.
According to one site, they shot the scenes twice. I think this is something to do with the media corporations aiming at the lowest common denominator. They probably felt that there might be someone put off with a film about philosophers or something stupid like that - Do remember these are marketing people.
As someone who works with high school kids, I am glad for Harry Potter for one reason - they are getting kids to read.
Are the Harry Potter books getting kids to read books or are they getting kids to read Harry Potter? One is great, the other is a fad. One will last them a lifetime, one will die shortly after the last book comes out. (I also submit that it is probably too early to tell the long lasting effects.)
I would recommend that everyone read them, even if you pick them up from a library.
I find it very disheartening that someone who 'works with kids' speaks of the library as if it's a distant second choice. You express gratitude that the books are getting kids to read, then slam the greatest reading resource a child or adult can have barely a paragraph later.
I read the first two books (I refuse to buy the third and fourth in hardback), and they are a good read. Not the best ever (I have a difficult time comparing Ender's Game with Harry Potter), but a good read.
It's unsurprising you have a hard time comparing them. Despite the superficial points in common, (mistreated child Makes Good and Saves The World), they are very different books, aimed at very different audiences. It's comparing apples and oranges.
Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Ascosta running around in an drug frenzy trashing Vegas hotel rooms to Harry Potter and Hogwarts. That would be a rather broad recent career arc for Mr. Gilliam wouldn't it? Though I suppose whatshisname of LoTR fame (Pete Jackson?) did 'Meet the Feebles' so I suppose its not without preceedent that directors can do both very 'ugly' works and mass marketable blockbuster fantasy style material. However if Jackson did upleasant works it was more to do a self parodying exploitation type film - there really wasn't much creative or thought provoking in that movie, it was just the new path down exploitation film making that you probably weren't expecting.
I think there is maybe the impression that because Gilliam did well known 'fantasy' films like Munchausen and Time Bandits that he is a superb fantasist. However despite those accomplishments I think the type of movies he tends to gravitate towards are generally too dark and unsettling and overly cerebral to be commercial grade fantasy. Though he nearly exclusively deals with fantastic subjects the flow of his movies generally don't follow an escapist mold at all, rather they tend to dwell on the absurdity of escapism and the plots tend emphasis how unromantic and far from the 'fantastic' mold actual life can be. For instance, look at how much trouble he went to showing how arbitrary and upoetic most of the deaths in Time Bandits were, and Munchausen only stayed afloat by constantly emphasising its own absurdity and the complete unreality of the events it described - the fact that the story of Munchausen was not real but nonetheless emotionally appealing was one of the main thrusts of that movie. In fact in every one of his films it is the psychology of fantasy and how it is used to get along in life rather than an exploration of the actually fantastic that is of primary thematic importance. Most of Gilliam's work is more about dealing with the fact that people's dreams and fantastic notions are by nature almost always contrary to what will actually happen in their lives rather than just reiterating the rather trite stereotypes of escapism. There is a reason that Brazil is considered his cornerstone work, and its not because his baroque visual style was first fully realized in a movie with that film, rather it was because the movie was about the nightmare of being psychologically dependant on fantasy that will never come true.
So I agree that Gilliam would not be a good director for this film any more than he would be a good director for Star Wars and LoTR even though Harry Potter is a little more self consciously surrealistic in nature. The simple fact is that Gilliam does not do fantasy for its own sake, rather what he does tends to usually gravitates more towards drama where the primary tension resides in the disparity between character's fantastic notions and the more unromantic situations of their actual lives.
i honestly I think if there was a major director who would be good on this project it would be Tim Burton. He is much adept at doing atmospheric fantasy while staying much more true to mainstream entertainment values than Gilliam.
-K
apparently (according to news sources in the uk), it's because american audiences (of the book and the film) wouldn't understand who/what a philosopher is. so they simplified it.
Get him to read the Lord of the Rings
... it would be science.
And given that, in this series, magic IS reliable and repeatable (and thus is really a science and its asscoiated technology), the rest of the story becomes:
- Child from broken home is abused.
- Child escapes from broken home through institutional opportunity for children like him to enter higher learning institution.
- Child enrolls in a "science/technology" degree program, in a "science" for which he has a talent (and which is thus fun).
- Child grows up, learning about good and evil, human relations, etc., making friends (and enemies) and having a good time along the way.
- Child breaks rules (as adolescents must do at least once), getting in an appropriate amount of trouble and finding an appropriate amount of opportunity as a result.
- Child learns more family history.
- Child and friends solve serious adult-world problem.
- Child and friends make progress exposing and combatting the plans of evil/psychopathic persons.
etc.
Substitute "science" for "magic", and the whole thing turns into a real-world growing-up success story, with lots of useful lessons about attitudes and behaviors useful for achieving success, morals, and social standing. But using the technology of magic allows the young reader to easily transfer these lessons to the real-world without the distraction of technical particulars from the author's understanding of a PARTICULAR technology's CURRENT state-of-the-art.
Meanwhile it's a very fun read, keeping the reader engaged and encouraged to continue.
So in addition to teaching kids to read, this series seems likely to teach a lot of good stuff, all the while making it LOADS of fun (as learning SHOULD be).
I'm glad to hear it made it to the silver screen with its guts intact.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Different meaning mostly. Philosopher's Stone will paint a different mental image for Europeans than Americans. Sorcerer's Stone doesn't paint the same image for us, but it brings us closer at least.
SIG: HUP
In a word: Yes.
At least here in the Netherlands there is a culture that says that children's literature must be in the first place educational, or pedagogical or any such buzzwords as are spouted by those purveyors of that soul-destroying pseudo-science that is called 'child psychology'. From what I've heard (I haven't read the books yet) J.K. Rowling hit on exactly what kids want: a good story.
Incidentally, the secondary (or even tertiary) importance of story, plot and likeable characters is what is considered vogue among so-called 'serious' adult literature too. Perhaps that is the reason that adults latch on to Harry Potter with the same fanaticism as kids seem to do.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Just a clarification, for those poor 'mericans deeply offended by the name change: they left it intact in the canadian release.
Guess our kids are a bit more sophisticated...
;)
Are the Harry Potter books getting kids to read books or are they getting kids to read Harry Potter? One is great, the other is a fad. One will last them a lifetime, one will die shortly after the last book comes out. (I also submit that it is probably too early to tell the long lasting effects.)
The way to get kids to start reading regularly is to get them to realize the enjoyment that can be obtained from books.
My own love of reading really started with "The Great Brain" books when I was in 5th grade. I enjoyed them so much that when I was done with them, I eagerly looked around for more books to enjoy, so I moved on to "Tarzan" and Piers Anthony.
In order to enjoy books, you first have to get over that intimidation factor associated with reading. Early in a child's life, reading is difficult. It's so much easier to be engaged in a story by flipping on the television. Building up the proficiency at reading in order to be able to enjoy stories of an equal or greater value than what kids get on TV takes time. If HP books are providing that first step toward the realization that reading books can be more fun than watching the toob, then that's awesome.
I certainly don't understand the implication of your post that somehow a good book or two might be a negative factor in cultivating a child's love of reading.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Pagan traditions are a perfectly valid religious tradition in and of themselves. Harry Potter books are mere fantasy, they have little to do with any existing pagan religious such as Wicca or Druidism.
Perhaps more teenagers are turning toward pagan religions because of the smug intolerance towards other religions (think of Reverend Lovejoy from "The Simpsons") they see from their "Christian" neighbors, who generally exemplify very, very little of Christ's teachings. Perhaps in a genuine search for a meaningful spirituality, they look into and find out more about other religious traditions such as those found in many of the neo-pagan traditions. Perhaps they end up becoming atheists, perhaps they end up joining Opus Dei. Perhaps they end up running through the woods nude under the full moon. Perhaps they end up eating bread that turns to flesh and wine that turns to blood. At any rate, Christians have not cornered the market on ethical or moral behavior, developing an interest in the modern adaptations of pre-christian religions is hardly the road to perdition that most bible thumpers would have us believe.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
j00 r rit3 d00d. I learned to r34d & rit3 on the net, and I 0wn3d 4ll my b00ks 0nlin3 t00. 3v3r r34d th3 h4ck3r's c00kb00k? Frickin' A, man, frickin' A!!
... I'm getting shivers just thinking about it..
:-P
The advantage of the written word is that it is generally spell and grammar checked, and that the stuff that gets printed is usually half-decent. On the internet, you get a lot of stuff, and it's hard to filter out the crack.
..er, I mean crap.
That having been said, anyone who thinks "Harry Potter'll bring kids back to books!" is a complete twit. "But kids like it!" They like porn too; I say that if you really want to reel the kids back in, give 'em porno novels.
No, the Harry Potter books don't suck; I'm with all you rabid fans on this one. They're fairly decent. From the first one, which I've read, I think they're well written, have some involving characters and a reasonably deep plot. But that's no reason to force kids to read the books. Or to make it a core novel for a grade-school level course.
The last thing we want is teachers teaching kids how they should think about these characters. It's only a matter of time, parents, before your kids are being taught that Harry's uncle was obviously abused as a child, or that Ron was an Irish immigrant whose parents should learn to use birth control. Your teachers will have invaded yet another fun place where your child's imigination used to reside, and mold it to match their own. I'm all for molding youths into upstanding citizens, but leave their frickin' imaginations alone, willya?
Teachers love this kind of book because it "gives them something new to work with."
Children hate this kind of textbook because it's "arbitrary."
And it is. "What does the owl represent? How about Harry's scar? What is the signifigance of the flash of green Harry remembers from his childhood?" *shudder*
So please, don't make it a required read, with questions and the like. Let kids enjoy a book for a change, without having to be taught the prejudices of their forefathers as fact.
I've also heard this "making reading fun again!" poppycock so many times, and it's really starting to wear thin. I doubt this'll put any respectable dent whatsoever in illiteracy in America. People who want to read will continue to read. People who don't, won't. And any parent who can't get their kids to read has bigger problems than finding a book like Harry Potter to hold their attention.
Although.. now that I think about it, it kinda makes sense. Assume for a moment that you are an illiterate parent. Your kid doesn't want to read either. You really don't know what to force them to read because you keep giving them crap, or whatever, because you have no experience to base your reading selections for them on. And you don't want to ask for help, because you're too proud. (..or you ran your phone bill too high and it was disconnected.)
Then Harry Potter shows up, and all your troubles are solved. You buy your kid some books, and spend the rest of the month watching Jerry Springer re-runs on television.
Amazing. Harry Potter will solve the problem of white trash. Whoo. I'm sold.