While it is charming to see how appropriately Daniel Radcliffe as Harry and Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as inseparable pals Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger have matured in a year, the eagerness of Grint’s Weasley to continually make “Little Rascals”-type faces is unfortunate.Īs for the adults, Alan Rickman seems already tired of his role as Professor Snape, while Maggie Smith appears to be getting more used to being Professor McGonagall. The acting in “Chamber of Secrets” is a similarly mixed bag. Truly, all that money can buy has been bought, and though that is an accomplishment of a sort, it is not great filmmaking. It’s amusing to see the Whomping Willow, the screaming mandrake plants and the bad-tempered Howler sent by Mrs. To give the devil its further due, “Chamber” has a bit of the magic of the Rowling originals, mostly in its ability to reproduce some of the book’s peripheral tricks. And the problem has never been anyone’s intentions toward the material “Chamber’s” two-hour, 41-minute length shows that, if anything, the films are more concerned than they should be about leaving something out. “Chamber of Secrets,” like its predecessor, is intelligently cast and makes good use of behind-the-camera talent like returning screenwriter Steve Kloves and new cinematographer Roger Pratt. The original material is wonderful, but what’s clearer after two films than one is that Columbus’ cinematic treatments are unlikely to rise above the acceptable level of expensive copies to become truly memorable in their own right. Rowling books are fated never to get completely satisfying film versions. It’s fortunate that Alfonso Cuaron is set to take over the series from Chris Columbus and direct the next installment, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” with Columbus in charge the J.K. The film’s scary moments are too monstrous and its happy times have too much idiotic beaming, making the film feel like the illegitimate offspring of “Alien” and “The Absent-Minded Professor.” Not so here.īecause “Chamber of Secrets” can’t seem to get the balance right, it ends up broadly overdoing things on both ends of the spectrum. The darkness that invades “Chamber of Secrets” underlines how well the books managed to exactly balance good and evil, dark and light, so that within their pages you seemed to be experiencing both at the same time. For the Harry Potter novels have a kind of magic that it is beyond the powers of these films to duplicate.
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