Fun but derivative

Rating: 6/10 (1 February 2013)

By January 2013 I had never read a Harry Potter book or seen any of the movies. I decided to start with the moviesÂ….
The second film in the series was as competently done as the first one though perhaps a little on the long side. The acting from the young leads improved and additions to the adult cast were welcome. It's hard not to be swept up by Robbie Coltrane's portrayal of Hagrid and I was impressed by Richard Griffiths and Fiona Shaw who are convincingly awful and bring great comic timing to their parts.
I was underwhelmed by the big set pieces at the end which followed a standard quest where the hero has to overcome certain obstacles to win through. Nothing wrong with that except that there are elements of Raiders here and the use of underground perils you've seen in a thousand other films but with more CGI. Speaking of CGI I noted that the CGI character, Dobby, was nowhere near as annoying as the over-the-top portrayal of Gollum in Lord of the Rings (I'm still convinced that Andy Sirkis would have made a better Gollum without the use of GGI but that's another story).
There's another boring Quidditch sequence and lots of unconvincing use of magic (wave the wand and mumble something vaguely Latin) but otherwise another sound and enjoyable film