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Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets
11/15/02 - PG - 161m
Daniel Radcliffe
Emma Watson
Rupert Grint
Director: Chris Columbus
JEF
The sequel to the original Harry Potter movie opened this weekend, and
this was a must see for me. I’ve been a fan of the books. I have
read all 4 books in the series, and enjoyed them all. I enjoyed the first
Harry Potter movie " Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone",
except for a few things that kind of bothered me. I had read all the books
before seeing the movie, so I had all of the characters, and story painted
in my mind, and the movie didn’t match up to what I had imagined.
Ok, I can overlook that, after all a movie is a form of art, and it’s
open to the artist’s interpretation. I also felt the characters
were a little flat in the first movie as well. But, overall I did enjoy
it.
Now, this movie "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" had
some of the same flaws as the first. My biggest complaint was that it
was too long. I’m not opposed to long movies. In fact with a movie
like "The Lord of the Rings", I actually wished was longer!
But Harry Potter 2 needed to be trimmed down. I think part of the problem
was that the director "Chris Columbus" was trying to be TOO
faithful to the book. A movie can only be an adaptation of the book. You
can never fit the entire book into a 2-3 hour movie. But Chris seemed
to have stuck to the book closely. So rather than picking a few key scenes
and fully exploring them, he choose to include a lot of little scenes.
And it all felt forced.
As much as I like Daniel Radcliff’s work as playing the lead character
of Harry Potter, I honestly think he’s getting too old. His voice
changed, and he acted older too. I think it’s going to be a real
challenge to bring the next Harry Potter movie to the same level as the
first. Part of the charm to this series by creator J.K. Rowling is to
be brought into this world as seen through the eyes of young Harry Potter
and his struggles as a kid. If he appears onscreen to be a teenager, or
young adult it will lose some of the magic.
Afterall this is supposed to be a book/movie for children! I think some
people forget that. And this movie seriously crosses some lines that I
would not feel comfortable with in letting younger children see. As an
Adult, I enjoyed the darker scarier scenes, but this movie was not supposed
to have been made for me. I especially like the spiders in the "dark
forest". That was creepy! Actor "Rupert Grint", did a fine
job playing "Ron Weasley" in the cave of all those spiders.
But this movie had a complicated plot, and some rather scary, and gory
scenes that I would not suggest bringing young children to.
There was also a bitter sweet problem in watching this movie as well.
Richard Harris, who played the loveable character of the old "Albus
Dumbledore" just recently passed away due to Cancer. I couldn’t
help thinking about this while watching this movie. To know that in the
next Harry Potter movie, we will lose the talents of this fine actor.
I know this review sounds like a lot of negatives, but I did enjoy the
movie. I had read the book several years ago, so much of the storyline,
I had forgotten. Much of the movie was a new surprise for me. I had a
completely different character in mind for the ghost known as "Moaning
Myrtle". I imagined a weak, timid sad little girl, but the character
in this movie was mixed from crying to shouting in your face. I had a
hard time getting used to that.
Some of the effects were very well done. The Spider sequence was great!
The flying car was ok. The quidditch match was ok. The "characters"
were pretty good too, though I think they could have been better. The
Dobby character was well done as far as emotion, and technical skill in
the 3d computer graphics, but again, I had him pictured as a little more
"cute". Dobby was borderline scary. I’m afraid to see
what sort of merchandise toys will look like for Dobby.
I won’t go into describing the plot as it’s too complicated,
and if you’re not familiar with the Harry Potter series, won’t
make a whole lot of sense.
To wrap things up here, I enjoyed the movie overall. Yes there were problems.
Yes it was very long! But as a fan of the books I’m glad I went
to see the movie. I will definitely see Harry Potter 3. But as a true
"yellow light" rating, be warned about this movie.
Jef
PS> I was also impressed with the job that actor "Jason Isaacs" did, in playing the part of "Lucius Malfoy".