This movie is very well done; Rowlings maintained control, got the actors that she wanted, and it shows.
I imagine everyone knows the story line, but to summarise for any others it is the story of an opressed orphan brought up by crass un-loving relatives who discovers as he faces high school that not only is he a wizard, but one who survived a lethal magical attack as a baby, and is consequently famous. The magical world runs parallel to, but hidden from, the non-magical world. This first story (of at least three of the seven that will be made into movies) covers his first year of high school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Each story has an evil event thwarted by Harry with help from others.
In particular the Quidditch game scene is spectacular. Quidditch is a sort of hockey-rugby-polo-like game played on flying broomsticks with flying balls. To make the book into a movie much previously left to the imagination had to be made concrete, and it was done successfully.
Considering the number of young (and thus new) actors that were required, Harry, Hermoine and Ron are superb. More than one acquaintance has commented that Hermoine was better in the flesh than in the books! Naturally, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, and Alan Rickman were excellent as well. Even Draco Malfoy was great. (Funny how we name the adults as actors and the children as characters.)
If there are shortcomings they must be laid at the door of film: The trite nature of the plot is exposed through the telling of the story in the space of less than 3 hours. To put this comment in context, I must say that when 2/3 of the way through the third book I stopped reading and tried to work out whodunnit, which I did successfully, even to working out that there was a character as yet unrevealed, and I considered this a good reflection upon the assembly of the books plot. However, even with this level of involvement in the first book (I both read and listened to it) I had not really seen that the plot was simple.
Another shortcoming might be that the film, presumably to be cross-cultural, loses a lot of the humour that poked fun at various things. It also loses a lot of detail. I think both of these were necessary to make a single film of the story.
All said, I'd give this 8/10, the lost two points being a consequence of the "light" nature of what is simply a fun story.
PostScript:
After getting the DVD and watching this film more than 20 more times with
Merinda and Edwin,
I can say that it stands up to rewatching very well indeed.
The characters are so well done, and the visuals so rich,
it has not seemed shallow as one might expect. I think this earns it
a 9/10.