Not a great film, still pretty good

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2018)

This movie is 2 and a half hours long and feels like less than an hour, this is both good and bad as I can happily watch this film over and over again but it also means its quite forgettable and fails to really make an impact. That being said this is a great sequel and many of the things that made Philosopher's Stone good is carried onto this one. Where this movie falls short in my opinion, is the plot. Chris Columbus has been called a tactless director and I can see where some of his scenes, particularly the action ones, are played so broadly that they lose all semblance of meaning. He is not particularly adept at handling the young actors, who come across as pretty bland and uninteresting. Rupert Grint as Ron is sort of annoying, overplaying the stuff that was likeable at first. Likewise, he is unable to invigorate some of the scenes, especially action scenes like the car scenes, the spider scene, and even the final encounter between Harry and the Basilisk and they come off as overlong and particularly flat. The main problem with the film is that it has been produced in a very dull, bland manner. Instead of focusing on Harry's uncomfortable realisation that the wizarding world has problems and his shock at how quickly the school turn against him, Chris Columbus seems intent on making the film a magical version of a school where kids merrily skip around solving problems, like in Scooby Doo.