almost is not good enough

Rating: 6/10 (2 December 2002)

Dobby the house elf warns Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) not to return to Hogwarts for his second year of magical lessons soon after the audience receives a taste of Harry's miserable existence with the Dursley family in the opening sequence of director Chris Columbus' Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Dobby, a computer generated character and one of the special effects that keeps this film moderately entertaining from start to finish, remains ambiguous in his warning but stresses that `terrible things are about to happen!' Many audience members exit the theater wondering if Dobby spoke of the dangers awaiting Harry at Hogwarts or the trite and threadbare story awaiting theatergoers for nearly three hours of the film's duration.
Screeching mandrakes, the howler Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) receives from his mother (Bonnie Wright), a conversational diary, the phoenix, the ghostly Moaning Myrtle (Shirley Henderson), and other special effects including a cinematically superior game of Quidditch make the second Harry Potter film better than the first installment and superficially enjoyable, but spectacle alone cannot sustain a film even in this magical world. Kenneth Branagh wins the hearts of his female students and audience members in the role of Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, Jason Isaacs is notably cold and cruel as Lucius Malfoy, and the late Richard Harris as Headmaster Albus Dumbledore creates depth for his character amidst the other one-dimensional characters of the film, but these three veterans along with Maggie Smith as Professor Minerva McGonagall cannot tap their wands and make magic out of Steve Kloves' lackluster script that includes the most exciting events from J.K. Rowling's novel but fails to support these events with other necessary plot points making much of the film random and nonsensical.
The young actors including Radcliffe, Grint, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, and Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy generally showcase improved performances from their first attempts in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but they all lack the versatility and subtlety of accomplished actors. None of these amateurish actors attempt to find believable persons within their characters, and consequently each character emerges as a dull caricature. Harry is the unsuspecting hero. Ron is the pathetically helpless and bewildered sidekick. Hermione is the brain of the operation. Draco is the representation of evil. The script provides only one-dimensional characters, and none of these actors has the ability to create something out of nothing as more skilled performers can do, which adds to the banality of the film.
Columbus' first priority for the next film in this series should be to find a screenwriter with a vivid imagination and the creative ability to bring Rowling's world to life. The cast will miss Harris as Dumbledore and the young actors need a few more lessons in their craft before shooting begins, but with a decent blueprint this cast has the potential to rival anything the imagination could possibly create. Improvement is a step in the right direction and the film is almost worthy of some acclaim, but as Ron discovered in Professor McGonagall's class, almost is far from perfect and never quite good enough.