Quidditched

I may be one of about twenty adults left in the Twin Cities that haven't read all four Harry Potter books.

Oh, don't get me wrong: I'm not like my sister, who bans the stuff from her house because of her understandable (but silly) belief that they glorify sorcery. My kids have, between them, read them both at least once. They love 'em, and I credit them with catapulting my son's reading level in particular into the stratosphere; it's amazing what a little raucus adventure does for a boy's imagination. And I've read bits and pieces of the books, as bed-time stories - they're fun, well-written, and engaging. Heck - I may even read one all the way through someday. Maybe.

So I understand they're better than either movie adaptation.

Oy, vey - they'd have to be.

I took the kids to see "Chamber of Secrets" Friday night. It didn't help that the 7:45 show was sold out, and the kids inveigled me to wait for the 9:45 show. Which was when I discovered the show was three hours long.

Long story short - I conked out for most of the climax of the movie (although my kids certainly did not). It wasn't just fatigue from having been ill (although that played its part) - it just didn't grab me. It occurred to me - I was more interested in the characters and story in the roughly two hours I've spent reading the stories to my children than in the nearly six hours I've spent in the movies!

John Podhoretz says pretty much what I think:

Might all this affect or scare seven-year-olds? Possibly, but then you can still terrify a seven-year-old by saying "Boo." It's not much of an accomplishment to frighten them. It is an accomplishment to stir their imaginations and infuse their bedtimes with a sense of wonder and excitement. That's what J. K. Rowling has managed to do with her triumphant series of novels. She has revitalized children's literature by making it a grand adventure once more.

The two Harry Potter movies, by contrast, are plodding and dull and dutiful. They attempt to be faithful to the books, and yet the very qualities that make the books so glorious are entirely absent. The movies get everything right but still manage to get everything wrong.

On the plus side - the new Lord of the Rings is almost here.

Before you think that makes me sound like a AV-Club robodork, we are talking about he opposite phenomenon; I couldn't stand Tolkien's books. I made it maybe 30 pages into Rings, and maybe 15 into The Hobbit - and this in ninth and tenth grade, at the height of my acne-ridden, greasy-haired dorkitude.
Yet I loved last year's installment in a way that I never enjoy fantasy/sci-fi movies or books - because it told the story in a way that engaged even a hardened non-fan, made me actually want to know what was going to happen to these people...er, people and hobbits and elves and dwarves and other such things I hadn't talked about since my one lone game of D and D, back in the seventies.

Posted by Mitch at November 19, 2002 08:08 PM