| Hyped Harry Potter film opens in US and Britain |
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The day fans of literature's most famous boy wizard have been awaiting for months has arrived -- the Harry Potter film opens on Friday across the United States, Britain and Canada. Early indications suggest ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,'' based on a children's story by J.K Rowling, will break box office records on both sides of the Atlantic. In previews across Britain last weekend the film, which spreads to Europe later this month, grossed 6.6 million pounds. The biggest UK opener of all time, the 1999 ``Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace,'' took 9.5 million pounds including previews. Rowling's books about Potter's exploits at the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft have sold some 125 million copies around the world. Cinemas across Britain and the United States have reported their biggest advance bookings ever and an unprecedented number of screens are being dedicated to the film. It is hardly surprising given the hype and glowing media reviews that preceded it. ``(The film's director Chris) Columbus has made a film with enough imaginative power and sheer entertainment value to outstrip and outlast all the cynicism,'' Britain's Daily Telegraph reviewer Andrew O'Hagan wrote on Friday. Barbara Ellen wrote in the Times the film was ``a cinematic wish-fulfillment.'' ``The world of Harry Potter has everything a child-like imagination could hope for,'' she said. But reviewers expressed concern about the effect of some of the more frightening scenes in a film aimed mainly at children. Ellen talked of the ``dark, noisy third part of the film...where the movie started looking more like adult horror than a child's fantasy.'' (China Daily)
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