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100
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Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
A red-blooded adventure movie, dripping with atmosphere, filled with the gruesome and the sublime, and surprisingly faithful to the novel.
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80
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Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
What saves Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is what created it in the first place: J.K. Rowling's enrapturing imagination. At those sporadic moments when the film allows us to share in Harry's wonder, it lets us recapture our own as well.
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80
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Washington Post Desson Thomson
Retains (and in many cases, boosts) as much of the spirit [of the book] as you could reasonably expect. And it makes a worthy attempt to duplicate Rowling's engaging sense of humor.
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75
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Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
That sense of déjà vu is at once this Harry Potter's balm and its limitation: many charms, but few surprises.
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75
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San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham
Absolutely the best single moment, beautifully presented, comes when the orphaned Harry looks in a mirror and sees his parents there. It is brilliant in its simplicity and very moving.
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75
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USA Today Claudia Puig
Though the film will undoubtedly please the young viewers who flock to it, ultimately many of the book's readers may wish for a more magical incarnation.
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70
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Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Is the movie any good? At the dawn of the twenty-first century, when art is defined by commerce, this question is beside the point.
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60
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Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
What's on screen, though, is a cautious approach to cinema wizardry -- broad, colorful strokes and flash-bang effects that turn J.K. Rowling's words into a long, cheerful spectacle with a Muggle soul.
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50
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Washington Post Rita Kempley
Potter-philes are sure to get what they want -- if what they want is, in fact, an exacting version of J.K. Rowling's charming children's fantasy. If it's enchantment they are after, that's quite another matter.
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40
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The New York Times A.O. Scott
Given that movies can now show us everything, the manifestations that Ms. Rowling described could be less magical only if they were delivered at a news conference.
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