Harry Potter

4 Pages 950 Words

Harry Potter: Book or Movie
Have you ever watched a movie then decided to read the book? Well this is just the case in hand after I watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. After reading the first book in the series, by J.K. Rowling’s, I was hooked, on the novels that is. The movie lacked many of the key elements that the book offered the reader. Before I read the book, I truly enjoyed the movie. However, now I can honestly say I am a quite disappointed. I feel like, Harry Potter: Now You See It….Now You Don’t. When I took my son to watch Harry Potter, presented by Warner Bros. and directed by Chris Columbus, I was surprised to see the theater was full of young children and the older generation alike. I was under the impression that the Harry Potter novels were for the teenage group or those like me, young at heart. As I soon found out it was a movie for those of all ages. While many of the ideas in the movie was drawn from the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, some ideas where changed to fit in the movie’s PG rating. This was illustrated by Claudia Puig, “But the movie ultimately lacks the book’s delightful whimsy and much of the sly verbal humor that made Rowling’s tales so charming” (par. 1). I agree with this in saying the book is much better than the movie.
This movie was highly anticipated by moviegoers. Shawn Fitzgerald writes, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the much-anticipated film adaptation of the first of the J.K. Rowling’s literary blockbusters, is the ultimate example of Hollywood playing it safe to ensure maximum monetary returns” (par. 1). I believe this to be true do to the returns at the box office in the first weeks alone.
This story has received mixed reviews from the start. Fitzgerald states, “…the story is lacking the crucial emotional juice needed for the viewer to connect to the characters” (par. 5). However, on the other side of the spectrum t...