Need not be kept a secret

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2010)

I'm watching the movies of Harry Potter without read the books, unusual as it might sound to be in a position of never having read the Harry Potter books. I enjoyed the first one, and I think the second slightly has the edge over it for a number of reasons. "Chamber of Secrets" with the same director and almost the same cast, retains very much the same feel as "Sorcerer's Stone," presenting a lengthy, expansive, and beautifully imagined world at the end of Harry Potter train (or in the case stolen hovercar) journey.
This time, however, the basic characters and situations have been introduced, so more time can be spent developing the interesting characters that inhabit the school, and exploring its history. When an interesting world as detailed as this has been created it is natural that there should be room for curiosity about its history and lore, and this movie takes advantage of that. We meet parents, and learn history. In addition, the cast of child actors from the previous film have now grown somewhat and accordingly are given some slightly weightier scenes to handle, which they can do. This gives us a little more hint at character in our protagonists and allows a greater sense of attachment.
In addition, while it is still there, any self-reverential tone to the original has been toned down a bit – as if once over the hump of making a satisfactory adaptation of a series of books with so many fans, the filmmakers feel they can let loose just a bit more. There's more humor, with very funny scenes especially early on in Harry Potter's uncle's house with Richard Griffiths. There's the addition too of Kenneth Branagh as a not-very-nice but still somehow likable and highly enjoyable character. Dobby is a delightful computer-generated character. Moaning Myrtle too is very funny.
It's a complex operation to adapt such long books to the screen, I'm sure, and as such some of the niceties of the plot can get hard to pick out for non-readers, and some problems are solved by the magic-fantasy equivalent of technobabble, but that doesn't stop of from being fun adventure. It could be possible to say that the second Harry Potter film was just more of the same – but it's more of the same of something very fun, and a noticeably better version of more of the same.