Saved from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, young Harry with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft.
Chris Columbus has created an extraordinarily detailed look that's both fantastic and yet has its own reality - exactly like an English public school, come to think of it, especially in your first term .
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is, despite its trickery, that plainest and least surprising of artifacts: the work of art that is exactly the sum of its parts, neither more nor less.
Although it suffers nominally from being over-stuffed and under-paced, it's grand and involving, with magnificent production design and special effects, and some fabulous thesps present and correct.
