DailyProphet

Joe Coughlin had no choice but to make his way through Day One of cinematic Pottermania at Loews Boston Common Theatre yesterday.
As the hours grew closer to the opening of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", his 8-year-old daughter, Mary, became as excited as he ever could remember, he said. So Coughlin took the afternoon off from work and chaperoned his daughter and three of her Chestnut Hill School classmates to the 3:30 show.
Mary and friends, Emma Rice, Mathea Huston, and Savannah O'Leary could barely contain their anticipation. And after brief worries about whether a computer-generated ticket would get the group into the theater, Coughlin could relax, too.
"It's kind of nice to see entertainment be more than fun," he said. "Something that involves both kids and parents. It's a community event, not just a flick."
The boy wizard, Harry, was universally admired for his bravery. But his friend Hermione also had her drawing points. "She's a good student, she's nice to people, and she has her own opinions, she goes on her own," Mathea said.
When asked if they were worried that the movie would be different than the book, Savannah shook her head, saying, "I don't think it will be diffrent because the author will talk to those people and say, 'I don't want this changed, don't change that.'
"If it is different," she warned, "I'm going to be very disappointed."
Those coming out of the film were anything but.
Garen Daly, a film critic who owns the Dedham Commmunity Theater, voiced an opinion: Kids love the Harry Potter Movie story because "it's a modern day fairy tale that they can plug into." He compared Harry to other cinematic heroes such as Luke Skywalker and Superman: all were orphaned, all had special powers and fought evil.
"Harry is allienated, he's rejected, he's lonely, he's powerless when he starts off," Daly said. "As child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim said, morality is not the issue in fairy tales, the assurance of success is. It's a feel-good ending."
"For kids," he said, " 'Harry Potter' is a four-star film. They will see it three or four times."

LONDON (AP) — The Harry Potter magic has enchanted audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, smashing box office records on its debut weekend. In Britain, the movie made $22.9 million over its opening weekend. The previous record-holder, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, took $13.6 million on its debut weekend in 1999. The boy wizard took $97.3 million at cinemas across the United States, beating the previous opening three-day record by Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park, with $72.1 million in 1997.
The film, which opened across Britain and the United States on Friday, translates to the screen a literary sensation loved by millions of children worldwide.
J.K. Rowling's Potter books follow the exploits of a young English boy who discovers he inherited magical powers from his parents, a pair of wizards killed by a powerful enemy. He's invited to become a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
"Everyone involved took great care and effort to protect the integrity of the characters and the story so beautifully rendered by J.K. Rowling, and we couldn't be more proud to have debuted this picture to such an overwhelmingly positive response." said Warner Bros. president Alan Horn.
The film is titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Britain. It has opened to mixed reception by reviewers, with some claiming the film is too long, too slow and too confusing for children.

LOS ANGELES — Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone cast a convincing spell over audiences this weekend, shattering virtually every box office record for a film debut and pushing Hollywood toward its most lucrative year ever. With an estimated $93.5 million in its first weekend, Potter broke the three-day record set by The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which grossed $72.1 million in 1997. It also claimed the record for best single-day take with $32.9 million, topping the previous best of $28.5 million by Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace on its opening day in 1999.
The numbers aren't entirely surprising, considering the movie opened in 3,672 theaters — more than half the theaters in the country — and on 8,200 screens, both records.
Still, Potter drew a staggering $25,500 per screen — another record — and is poised to become the first film to gross $100 million in four days. With no juggernauts on the horizon until Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring arrives Dec. 19, some analysts predict Potter will break the $200 million mark over the Thanksgiving holiday and could reach $300 million by mid-December.
"It had a broader appeal than we expected," says Brad Peppard, president of CinemaScore.com, a box office tracking firm. "Typically, a movie aimed at children skews heavily to the younger and older audience. But all age groups have read the book, and that translated to the theaters."
Analysts, however, say Potter will have to work some magic to topple the all-time box office king, Titanic, which grossed $600 million in the USA.
Unlike Potter, Titanic's core audience was teenage girls, who fell for the film's romance and saw the film again and again. Nearly three-quarters of Potter's moviegoers, meanwhile, were parents and children, according to exit polls.
And while kids may want to revisit the boy wizard, "the test will be whether parents want to sit through the movie often," says Gitesh Pandya, editor of boxofficeguru.com, a movie industry site. "I doubt it will overtake Titanic."
Not that Warner Bros. is complaining. In three days, Potter pushed the studio's revenues to $858 million for the year, tops in the industry. And the film virtually assures that Hollywood will gross more than $8 billion this year, beating last year's record of $7.7 billion.
"I believe it portends big business for us down the road," says Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros. He credited the studio's decision not to stray from J.K. Rowling's book for the movie's success.
"We were scrupulous and adhered to the letter in the interpretation of her work," he says. "The reaction we got this weekend reflects the pent-up demand for this movie from those who fell in love with the book."
Just how long the demand lasts is anyone's guess, says Tom Borys, box office analyst for ACNielsen EDI, which releases final weekend figures today. With 18 million Americans having seen the film in the first three days, "you can't discount Harry Potter's potential."