Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Review by Jason Gaston

Since his first movie made truckloads of cash, Harry Potter and his friends are back for another round of magic and mayhem at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Only this time around, a sinister force is at work within the ancient halls of the school and soon, school children who are half muggle (that's a non-magical type person to those who don't know) are being attacked and petrified and soon, Harry and his friends are stepping up to the plate to solve a fifty year old mystery.

I make no bones about it... the first Harry Potter movie bored me to tears. Sure, it was a wonderful example of fantasy filmmaking and fun to watch once, but to see a movie that takes three hours to tell a story that could have been told in an hour and a half does not a good time make.

Thankfully, even though Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets lasts almost the same amount of time, there's more story to fill it out. It's more interesting, more mature, and more engrossing than the first film.

And it's also darker, scarier, and more sinister. You take your kids to see this movie and, mark my words, they will be wetting their bed and crawling into yours for months to come.

The Chamber of Secrets is a stronger movie than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but it suffers many of the same drawbacks. A too literal adaptation of the popular book gives The Chamber of Secrets a draggy and slow momentum. There's an annoying CGI creature named Dobby that screams shades of Jar-Jar Binks and some of the kid actors shouldn't quit their day jobs.

I will say, however, that this is the best direction I've seen from Chris Columbus in a good long while. I mean, for a director that uses any excuse he can to milk emotion from the audience using sloppy sentimentality and phony emotions, Columbus remained very restrained throughout this movie.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is also a nice farewell to Richard Harris, who died earlier this month. Dumbledore is my favorite character of the whole lot and it's a good feeling to know that Richard Harris is being introduced to a whole new generation through these movies.

Overall, it's a better movie than the first, but there's still a lot of room for improvement when you consider that well over forty-five minutes could have been dropped from this movie that no one would have noticed... much less missed.

It may be too intense for the kiddies, but it's a nice diversion for the older sets and anyone can appreciate what a great fantasy environment the moviemakers have made Hogwarts into. If only they could put a more interesting movie in that environment, we'd have it made.