Harry Potter revolutionized children’s literature and reading across the board, and J.K. Rowling is to thank for it. With seven books published in 10 years, the wizarding world consumed many of its readers’ childhoods, leading to the inseparability of our world and Harry’s.
With Lifetime’s unauthorized biopic of Rowling, titled “Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story,” Harry Potter fanatics can hope to get a small peek into Rowling’s incredible rags-to-riches story.
The 86-minute pseudo-documentary opens with cheering crowds as J.K. Rowling, played by Poppy Montgomery, nervously sits in a limo, afraid to enter the spotlight at a “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” movie premiere. As she ponders her fame, she flashes back to her early childhood where her love for fantasy began. Entering the “forbidden forest” near her home, Rowling is joined by a blond boy, who resembles a young Draco Malfoy. Together, they substitute twigs for wands and chant playful incantations.
This isn’t the only flashback Rowling experiences during her hesitation in the limo. The entire movie is a flashback, racing through her childhood, on to her teenage years and then to her adult life leading up to the premiere.
The choppy, fast-moving timeline of the movie highlights the biggest turning moments in Rowling’s career, from her struggles to pick a more practical career than writing, to a decision to teach English in Portugal, to a devastating divorce and then to living on welfare. Montgomery, with a forged English accent, plays the part of Rowling convincingly, depicting her personality as private, humble and loyal. But as the film develops, Montgomery tries to shine in a plot that moves too fast.
Rowling's life is portrayed as one epiphany after another, with little time in between to recuperate from the last big “ah hah!” While the film answers the chronological questions of Rowling’s life, it doesn’t answer the question fans ask the most: how in the world did she come up with these stories?
Aside from the Malfoy look-a-like and the inclusion of a tall, red-headed friend during her teenage years named Sean, who Rowling has said is part of the inspiration for Ron Weasley, there are few details on where. Though the film does re-create Rowling’s first vision of “the boy who lived,” which came to her in a delayed train ride, throughout most of the film her ideas are kept in a battered box that travels with her from place to place.
When Rowling hits rock bottom, living as a single mother fully supported by welfare, she then opens the box and draws on the only hope that’s been with her since the beginning. After failed attempts at getting her manuscript adopted by first an agent, then a publishing house, “The Sorcerer’s Stone” becomes a must-have in not only Europe, but in America as well.
The story ends there: no surprises and no inclusion of the incredible, record-shattering triumph of the rest of the series. While the facts and landmarks are an important part of the story, fans might be left feeling the movie hardly did credit to Rowling’s story.
Rowling’s story is undoubtedly magical and miraculous beyond words, but the story of how the Harry Potter books came to be a staple on the bookshelves of children, teens and adults is intriguing enough to merit more development in this biopic.
The British author is notorious for keeping her life as private as possible, so it may be that those details are hard to come by, but regardless, the lack of inclusion of the world of Harry Potter in Rowling’s own world is bound to disappoint.
"Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story" will premier at 6 p.m. MDT on Lifetime. There is a brief domestic violence scene and mild language; running time: 86 minutes.
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