Oooh, just in time to distract us from this major war on terrorism is what some expect to be the largest money making film of all time. That is some hype. How can any movie stand up to those expectations? Well, this one almost does.

I have not read the Harry Potter books. To some, that means I am not qualified to see, much less review, this movie. Like that matters to me. The success of the books is now very clear to me. Most of us felt pretty powerless as kids. If you can write a story with enough magic and imagination to make an eleven year old boy seem like king of the universe, kids will line up to read it. And, yes, they’ll line up to see the movie too.

Harry Potter is a wizard. His good and magical parents have been killed and Harry the infant is left with his mother’s dumbo sister and her husband and their son. Think “Cinderella” for this part of the story. Harry’s mistreated and misunderstood and eventually the higher powers take him away to the academy for young wizards and witches, called Hogswarts. Don’t ask me, that’s what they call it. This is where you learn to harness and refine your magical powers and then go on to, well, I actually don’t know. I’ll have to wait for the next movie.

Harry is, of course, the star pupil ( I won’t tell you why that is so), and along with discovering himself, he and two buddies he’s picked up along the way, work on the mysteries of the “Sorcerer’s Stone”. Think “The Hardy Boys” meets “Indiana Jones” for this part of the movie. But that’s not to downgrade things. This is a very entertaining movie. The excitement includes a huge troll that looks a lot like “Shrek”, a huge three-headed dog, a huge and elaborate chess game and plenty of wands and spells.

I have to admit I did nod off a bit because this thing is two and half hours long and it stars three kids. Now I’ve got nothing against kids, but as actors, I often lose interest. Except if it’s that “I see dead people” kid. But for a kid’s movie, there’s some intricacy to the plot and some gross moments. Plus, watch all the old English actors in this movie. From Maggie Smith to Richard Harris to Alan Rickman, they have a great time hamming it up. They seem so competent though, I kept wondering why they can’t handle the problems with the sorcerer’s stone. Which reminds me of another thing I always think about when I see movies with witches and wizards. How does anything get done if everybody can go about performing magic? Or, why is there anything to do if everybody’s on the same side? You just go “shazam” or something and all’s well. You follow that? Ah, not important really.

“Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone” does focus a lot on introducing us to all the characters and the scene setting, and that does slow down things a bit. But I didn’t mind. I’ll watch these kids in the next movie too. Like Luke in “Star Wars”, Harry is going to have plenty of enemies to deal with, and friends to help him. The hype is so big for this movie though. I give it a “7.0” only because of that and because I’m not ten years old.