Girding for ‘Harry Potter’s’ Release

Without a doubt, the wizard sport of Quidditch is more exciting on film than it is in print. Hagrid the giant is as lovably scary on the big screen. But ghosts, wands and broomsticks are best left to the imagination.

Unfair to compare the film of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” to J.K. Rowling’s book before it even opens in U.S. theaters Nov. 16? Maybe, but get used to it. Soon enough, tens of millions of kid critics will be matching book to film scene by scene, spell by spell.

No one knows that better than director Chris Columbus and producer David Heyman, who promised the author that Hollywood would stay faithful to the beloved British children’s series and who let the film stand at more than 2 hours to pack everything in.

And just in case he had any doubts about the transcendental expectations of Harry Potter fans, Robbie Coltrane received a letter from an admirer reminding him that millions of children around the world were relying on him to capture the right blend of scariness and humor in his portrayal of Hagrid, groundskeeper at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

“So I thought, no pressure there, then,” Coltrane said the other day with a husky belly laugh. “But of course she was right, you know. It’s their little world.”

The world of Harry Potter is anything but little. It is the story of a boy living with his bullying aunt and uncle and spoiled cousin in England who learns on his 11th birthday that he is the orphaned son of two wizards with magical powers of his own.

In “Sorcerer’s Stone” (or “Philosopher’s Stone,” as it is called in Britain), Harry enters Hogwarts to begin his seven-year education in the magical arts, and faces off against the evil Voldemort, who killed his parents and branded him with a lightning bolt scar.

Hogwarts is a traditional British boarding school transformed into a gothic world of moving staircases, flying candles and a hallway that is “out of bounds to anyone who does not wish to die a most painful death,” as the wise and powerful headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, announces on the first day of school. It is a place inhabited by three-headed dogs and dragons, unicorns and centaurs, and owls that deliver the mail.

What “Sorcerer’s Stone” is not, says 12-year-old Daniel Radcliffe, who stars as Harry Potter, is a story about sorcery.

“It is about good over evil and redeeming love,” Radcliffe asserts. “It’s Harry’s mother’s love that saves him from Voldemort.”

Radcliffe had acted in a BBC television production of “David Copperfield” and in John Boorman’s film “The Tailor of Panama” before Columbus selected him over thousands of other boys for the coveted lead role. He appeared at a news conference last week with his child sidekicks in the film--Emma Watson, who plays the bookish Hermione Granger, and Rupert Grint, the redheaded Ron Weasley.

What Radcliffe likes about Harry, he said, is “the way he’s really loyal to his friends,” and what makes children around the world identify with the magical boy is that “other than the fact he’s a wizard, he’s a really normal person.”

The author of “Sorcerer’s Stone” and its sequels said she was “enormously relieved” by the picture. Rowling said that Columbus and Heyman had kept the promises they made to use a British cast and stay true to the book.

“They really do look as I’d imagined they would inside my head,” Rowling said in a statement issued after a private screening. The film has been rated PG because of a few bad words--”blasted” and others--and for some scary bits.

But just how frightening or funny audiences will find it is hard to gauge, given that real life has grown a lot scarier for some kids and most parents since Sept. 11. Will children who have heard about hijacked airplanes slamming into the World Trade Center and about anthrax attacks be moved by the orphaned Harry and evil Voldemort? Will the on-screen magic rise above the pre-release hype and proliferation of Harry Potterphernalia to inspire hope?

“I hope that people will find some comfort and enjoyment and some respite from the relentless bad news,” said Heyman. “One of the things I really feel about Potter is that it offers some hope and some sense of possibility. I hope that people enjoy going to that place for a little while.”

Of course they will, said Coltrane: “It’s a triumph of good over evil. It’s exactly what people need right now.”