Will kids sit through a 2 1/2 hour movie?

Although Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is regarded as a can’t-miss hit, its two-hour-and-32-minute length is giving some analysts pause for concern. Saturday’s London Independent noted that the film is nearly twice as long as Toy Story (80 minutes) and an hour longer than The Lion King (89 minutes), a fact that raises the question of whether children’s attention span won’t be severely taxed. But Dan Jolin of Britain’s Total Film magazine, pointed out that initially some people didn’t want anything cut out. ” A hundred million people in the world have read these [Potter] books and loved them,” he said, “and there’s a sense of the longer the better, even for children.” And in what is perhaps the first review of the movie, Ronald Epstein has written on the hometheaterforum.com website that the film’s length shouldn’t pose a problem. “Harry Potter unfolds like a good mystery book you don’t want to close,” he commented.