Cons: Could have used a decent editor - exposition too long for my taste
The Bottom Line: The pacing of HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS suffers from producers' inability to let go of the need to fit the whole book on the screen.
Kidnykid's Full Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS is the second film in the Harry Potter series, adapted from the identically-titled book.
The premise is that Harry Potter, after suffering a number of disasters and setbacks, finally gets back to Hogworts from the abusive home of his aunt and uncle (where he spent summer vacation). Once there, strange messages start being left on the walls of various places in the school, notifying young Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his best friend Ron Weasely (Rupert Grint) of the existence of the Chamber of Secrets.
This Chamber of Secrets, according to Professor Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith), was started by one of the four co-founders of Hogworts. This particular co-founder was the only one of the four who wanted to limit the Hogworts student body to what are known as purebloods - young people who come from purely magickal families and are themselves wizards. Admission was eventually granted to all young wizards, regardless of their heritage, at the behest of the other three co-founders of Hogworts. (Professor McGonagall also mentions, by way of explanation, the legend that there is supposed to be a vicious monster in the Chamber of Secrets.)
Those who do not have a magickal or wizard-ish heritage - but are themselves wizards nonetheless - are known as mudbloods, presumably because their blood has been dirtied or sullied by having normal people in their family tree. Harry Potter himself is of mixed heritage; his parents were apparently magickal, but his aunt and uncle (the ones who got custody of him when he was orphaned) are "normies." This makes him, and those who are purely mudbloods, targets of ridicule at the hands of the Malfoy clan.
Draco Malfoy (Tom Fenton) and Lucius (Luke) Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) are cast to perfection as the upholders of the ideal of admitting only purebloods to Hogworts. They also play an important (albeit peripheral, in my opinion) role in seeing to it that Harry Potter is knocked down a few pegs whenever possible. Jason Isaacs' interpretation of Lucius Malfoy is worthy of special mention; Isaacs portrays Lucius as the quintessential evil villain, just under the bottom enough to be truly believable as the nasty bad guy Lucius is. One can see where Draco got his "bad guy" persona, when Lucius plots to eliminate Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (the late Richard Harris) in order to institute his preferred policy of admitting only purebloods to Hogworts.
The late Richard Harris is also worthy of special mention. His Dumbledore is subtle and effective as the beloved headmaster who is just far enough removed from his students, and just humble enough, to be the object of reverence. Watch also for Kenneth Branagh, playing new Hogworts instructor Gilderoy Lockhart, egotistical best-selling author who is discovered to be a plagiarist in the end. (When you go to see CHAMBER OF SECRETS, be sure to stay to the very end of the credits after the movie. After the credits, you will see Lockhart get his comeuppance - and no, I don't feel it's fair to reveal just what that comeuppance is. But Branagh delivers his rendition of that comeuppance with subtle humor.)
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS has been widely praised for not having the degree of exposition necessary in HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE. Presumably, we know all the characters already, so we don't need to be re-familiarized with them. In this sense, I felt, other reviewers saw CHAMBER OF SECRETS as resembling the STAR TREK movies; just as we are so familiar with Kirk, Spock and company from the TV series that we do not need to be re-introduced to them in the movies, those who have read the books and seen SORCERER'S STONE don't need to know all about Harry Potter or Hogworts or his friends.
This reviewer respectfully disagrees with this praise. I felt that the first half-hour or hour could safely have been edited. It took far too long to get Harry back to Hogworts after his disastrous summer vacation. In this sense, CHAMBER OF SECRETS is more like ALIVE, believe it or not; Chris Columbus evidently was so focused on pleasing fans of the Harry Potter books that he didn't realize that he didn't have to do every detail of the book to make CHAMBER OF SECRETS an effective popular movie.
Please note that I am not saying that Columbus had to please the art-film or movie-as-art-form crowd. The Harry Potter series is, after all, unabashedly a popular group of books, not a literature lover's paradise that sells well. Therefore, the producers could stick to making a popular film rather than a critical favorite (although CHAMBER OF SECRETS is getting much better reviews than did SORCERER'S STONE, this is a mere side benefit when one considers the popularity of the Harry Potter source material).
What I am saying is that Columbus was free to choose which parts of the story he could focus on, and which could be safely sacrificed without gutting the plot. I feel strongly that it was ultimately unwise of Columbus and his screenwriter, Steven Kloves, to focus so much on getting every word of dialog right to please the pediatric fans of Harry Potter. There is a substantial audience out there for a credible film version which differs somewhat from the source material on which it is based; I understand there are even critics that will always "pan" movies that go the blow-for-blow route chosen by Columbus and Kloves. Note-for-note remakes might work for popular music (especially if we really want to remember a given era of our lives by listening to it), but word-for-word adaptations of fiction (Harry Potter books included) please only those who were fans of the original source material upon which the movies might be based. Kloves and Columbus are fortunate that they are working with something so popular as the Harry Potter books; had they taken this approach with other, less-popular, written sources for movies, they would have produced a boring box-office dud.
Cars fly, trees fight back and a mysterious elf comes to warn Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) at the start of the second year of his amazing journey i...More at Buy.com
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