My favourite films ... Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers

First of all, I didn't particularly like this film on first viewing. I went on the opening day to the Odeon in Brighton (a huge screen with a top quality sound system) with Nadjib who was already a big Harry Potter fan (another story) and he loved the film straight away. However I was disappointed, I had read and quite enjoyed the book, however the film adaption didn't work for me. In brief, it was as if they had tried to cram as many as possible scenes and details from the book into a film. The result for me was disappointing, firstly it was rather disjointed and secondly it was a bit long.

OK so at first it was a disappointment, but now it is one of my favourite movies which I can watch over and over again (I've just finished it again!). What has changed? Firstly I wanted to like Harry Potter as Nadjib did, when the film came out Xmas 2001 we had only been together for two years and had just moved from Luton to Brighton.

However this affection for Nadjib alone was not be enough to change this very good but clunky film adaptation into one of my favourite movies (despite numerous attempts, I can not really get into virtual gaming despite having playing a very cute wood elf warrior and a female barbarian with impossibly large breasts).

What made me into a Harry Potter fantastic (although I am only keen on the first three books), is that through Harry Potter I finally learnt to speak passable French! This something gripping and memorable about JK Rowlings writing style, and I found when picking up Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers that it was relative easy to read in French, there were loads of words I didn't know but I got the sense of the story and slowly with time + a french-english dictionary I filled in the details. There area still odd words witch catch me out, for example chahut: Quiconque fera du chahut pendant mes cours sera immédiatement renvoyé avec interdiction de revenir.

To be honest, the film doesn't quite work as a whole, but the individual scenes are great, the acting is good (a collection of the great and good from British acting). Also the sounds track is pretty good and dubbed into the French I can watch this over and over again!