"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone""

Most of Columbus' film concerns Harry's career at Hogwarts, as of course it should. There he discovers that he is the scion of a famous wizard family and a natural at Quidditch, and embarks on heady adventures with two equally precocious schoolmates, a sly carrot-top named Ron (Rupert Grint) and the know-it-all and budding bombshell named Hermione (Emma Watson). They battle a stupid but dangerous mountain troll and the fearsome, slobbering three-headed monster dog named Fluffy. They encounter evidence that Voldemort, who kills Harry's parents in an exceptionally lame flashback, is mounting a comeback and wonder whether the sinister Professor Snape (played with fine dourness by Alan Rickman) may be covertly aiding him.

All this is fine and dandy; most viewers will hardly notice or care that "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" gradually loses something as it goes along, something that might be called its mystical and emotional traction. The heart of Rowling's book lies in the wonder and delight of Harry's discovery that he really is someone special, despite the evidence of his life so far. In Kloves' screenplay, this transformation happens so quickly we barely notice it. After Hagrid takes Harry on his first thrilling visit to Diagon Alley, the secret Dickensian neighborhood of witches, wizards and goblins hidden in the heart of London, the drama and tension begin, ever so slowly, to ebb from the film.

As usual in contemporary fantasy, the reliance on special effects is part of the problem. There are lovely effects here and there, like the candles that float in midair, but Hogwarts, the film's principal setting, is a disorienting visual jumble. When the students row across a lake toward the school, in a night scene meant to impress us, it looks obviously and even self-consciously fake, like a two-dimensional miniature in the background of a 1930s Universal horror movie. On the inside, its roving bands of digital ghosts, moving staircases and living portraits have a jokey quality and only the faintest hint of darkness, like the Haunted House at Disneyland.

In the most densely computer-animated scenes, like the troll attack or the Quidditch game, there's a cartoonish quality that subtly undercuts Kloves' graceful screenplay and its well-modulated characters. Indeed, the film is so busy that two of Rowling's most beloved and august characters, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris) and his shape-shifting sidekick, Professor Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith), become little more than background figures.

But for everything Columbus' film mishandles -- such as the conflict between the rival Hogwarts' "houses," upright Gryffindor and sleazy Slytherin, which will seem incomprehensible to any nonaficionados in the audience -- it remains a professional entertainment with just enough human moments to squeak by. Coltrane's performance as the noble if slightly buffoonish Hagrid is the standout among the sterling adult cast, and the Sorting Hat, a sort of garrulous talking napkin that assigns new Hogwartians to their houses, is a low-tech effect put to hilarious use. This version of the Potter saga is fun and harmless rather than memorable or imaginative. That's certainly no crime, and in this holiday season, above most others, viewers of all ages and dispositions will surely welcome a break from the darkness outside.

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