Customer Reviews
Pleasant viewing, but nothing special - By: N. Thompson, 13 Aug 2008 
Never read the books so I came with an open mind when watching this film. Like the book, the film is for children but can be enjoyed by adults.
Unfortuneatly this came out at the same time as the excellent 'Lord of the Rings' & it cant reallly compare with Tolkiens classic (same with the books reallly) but you can enjoy it on its own merit, especiallly if you havnt bother reading the novel first. If you have, then it could be an up hill struggle. However, the acting & the characters are enjoyable & the whole movie leaves you interested enough to watch the follow-up movies.
This is certainly a better film than some other recent fantasy films like Narnia, The Golden Compass, The Seeker (Dark is rising) & the truely terrible Eragorn.
Good Start - By: Mr. Martin T. Hanley, 01 Jul 2008 
This is a visuallly beautiful film, with the best of the british lighting up the screen. But it's still my least favourite of the Potter movies, & this is because the pace of the film is slow (though that's mainly due to the setting up of characters & locations). Also though the children do a great job, I just prefer them in the next one because they are much better.
The dvd itself aint great, not too many extra's & no director commentary. For a 2 Disc I give the features 2 out of 5 though the movie is 3.5/5
enjoyable - By: martin thomas, 07 Jun 2008 ive never read the books but this is an enjoyable fun popcorn thats great for alll the family.theres a great british cast too
Very poor - By: I AM ME, 01 Nov 2007 
I have not been impressed with any of the five Harry Potter movies so far, but the first three are on a different level of badness than number four or five. Fine they are very faithful to the book, but they are terrible adaptations & the director & scriptwriter ought to be ashamed of themselves.
The plot is basicallly like this ( although everybody knows it ), Harry doesn't know he's a wizard until a giant tells him that he is, he then goes to a magic school callled Hogwarts & makes friends with Ron & Hermione, but everything doesn't go well because Harry finds out about the philosophers stone which is hidden in the school, & he suspects one of the teachers is going to steal it.
The problem with this movie is the following: The first two books were more for children than the ones following them, but this takes a novel for 9+'s & turns it into a soppy kids movie for four year olds who aren't able to tell te difference between a good movie & a bad movie, aswell as that they take the direction of the happy ending, & seem to ignore alll the horrors that Harry went through during the term. The script is terrible, I mean, no children talk like that, it's just disgraceful that any scriptwriter that bad could be hired for this major a movie. There are some excellent adult actors here, but even they have to struggle with a terrible script, & the three main kids in it are useless, nowadays Emma & Rupert are ok, but Daniel has only imroved a little bit, but certainly not enough to be convincing. The directing is very poor in this one & only starts to improve at number 3, when they got a new director.
I don't recommend this to anybody except young children, & the only reason I didn't give it 1 star is because of the good acting from most of the adults, & because I can't stand giving something even remotely connected to the genius of JK Rowling 1 star.
A good film - spolit by unnecessary bad language - By: John Jordan, 30 Oct 2007 This film keeps faithfully to the book but, for some reason, it has been considered necessary to put in some bad language that certainly does not appear in the book. A couple of "bloody hells", several more "bloodies", one "arse" & a "bugger". One wouldn't even notice this mild swearing in an adult film, but, in a film for children, it jars. Why is it considered necessary? Is it because it was scripted by Americans who do not recognise this as swearing? Doesn't this bother any other parents?
