OK, I'm back from seeing Harry Potter (and the rest of his movie, of course), and
here are some random impressions. I did like the movie. The staging, sets, and
costumes, had a nice Dickensian flavor, with lots of sepia tones. The Gryffindor
common room was far more luxurious, rich and decorative while still looking
comfortable, than, say, my living room. I want to move to Hogwarts now. No wonder
the students and teachers all seemed to be in fairly good shape; anyone trying to
get around that castle, with all those stairs, on a daily basis ought to have
thighs like Xeno Mueller's.
(I was going to say Lance Armstrong's, but I saw Xeno at a regatta the other week
and the man's got thighs bigger than my waist.)
Most of the
characters were not jarring far from my mental images. Harry's hair was much
messier than it had looked in the pictures I'd seen, fortunately, as this is a
point J.K. Rowling harps on. His eyes probably should have been greener. I was
expecting more freckles on Ron, and worse teeth on Hermione. Also, for some
reason, his name mostly, I always think of Rubeus Hagrid as having long red hair
and beard. That's not the movie people's fault, though, since JKR does describe
him with masses of black hair. Maybe she was envisioning a red face? Also, I had
pictured Neville as being shorter and rounder, and I would have guessed all those
Brits in the school to run more to redheads and blondes, with light eyes. There
did seem to be the appropriate number of non-Anglo-Saxon types, though. Lee Jordan
is black, as he was written, and I saw several Indian faces as well. No Asians,
but I don't recall any until Cho, even in the books.
If I had one
major complaint about the movie, it was that everything seemed so rushed; so many
of the delightful, scene-setting details were missing. They seemed to include only
things relevant to the main thread of the plot. I assume JKR kept them from
omitting anything that might be important in later episodes. (Does that mean
Neville's frog will do something important?) They probably couldn't have done
anything about this, however; even with all the omissions, including the coming
attractions, the movie ran about 2 hours and 40 minutes, and they couldn't
realistically make a children's movie any longer. What will they do with the 700-
plus page Book Four?
One other minor gripe: Chris Columbus or someone
appears to have an odd prejudice against the letter "P"; not only did they omit
Peeves the poltergeist, but also Dudley's friend, Piers Polkiss, Poppy Pomfrey,
the nurse (apparently, injuries have to heal normally in the movie world) and,
most significant, the potion challenge after the living chess game. I miss that
last one. I liked the idea that magic has to follow rules and that logic is always
important.