My Kids Finally Convinced Me to Watch ‘Harry Potter’ and…Oof, I Have *Thoughts*

But then, 25 years later, a curious thing happened. I had children. And they wanted to read Harry Potter. In fact, they wanted me to read it aloud to them. (Fun fact: grumpy people are quite adept at doing British accents.) And so, I rolled up my sleeves and read them Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, chapter by chapter, over the course of a few weeks. And I liked it! While not as a funny as Lemony Snicket or as emotionally-intelligent as Beverly Cleary, I appreciated the world-building, the levity and the plot twists and turns that truly surprised my 7- and 9-year-old. I get it, I thought. I understand why this is a thing.

The next logical step was to watch the 2001 movie, starring a pint-size Daniel Radcliff. After all, the world is obsessed with the films. Surely I’d be equally charmed. Reader: I was not.

Where to begin with the drudgery that is this two-and-a-half hour movie? Well, for starters, it’s two and a half hours. When we’d reached the thirty-minute mark and still hadn’t met a sorting hat, I knew I was in trouble. Then there’s the humorlessness. In the book, there are some genuinely funny moments that are all but erased from the film. For instance, when the Weasley twins try to send Harry a toilet seat or, as my son quickly pointed out, Dumbledore’s best line: That he sees himself holding a pair of socks in the Mirror of Erised.

And that’s to say nothing of the dated special effects which bring to mind a creepy Polar Express CGI backfire. Or the vaguely icky and offensive moments: the lack of diversity, the persistent fat-shaming, the banker goblins that perpetuate antisemitic tropes. In fairness, these are relics from the books, proof that J.K. Rowling was problematic long before her now well-known bigotry.