Very Ordinary Followup

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2002)

I was very much looking forward to the new HP movie, but having seen it now, I can only express a rather deep disappointment. ****some spoilers*****
The worst impression was simply - the magic is gone. I had no sense of adventure while watching. The scenes, though mostly well crafted cinematic pieces, were just far too long. They dragged, and so much so that I often found myself thinking `get on with it'. The pace of the movie definitely seemed to plod along. Yes, there were some action sequences, but there are so many character scenes where the dialog is drawn out so much.
As for the plot, well, having not read the book, I was left out of so much of the character motivation, that I just found many of their actions to be confusing. In fact, the lack of motivation for actions, or actions accompanying motivation had me almost uttering out loud many times `why would they do that?'
For example, the staff at the Wizard School seem ever so concerned about the Chamber of Secrets and the attacks on the students but do nothing at all for the whole movie. They are completely inert. They don't even intervene in the Quiddach match where a spell has caused one of the balls to attack Harry, and during the attack, it goes close to destroying the entire field and endangers half the school populous including themselves. The staff leave it to a young child to save the day, and then take no action afterwards to find the culprit.
There are other examples. The car just happens to turn up to save heroes when they been backed into an impossible corner. Yet the car shows no other sign of friendship with our heroes throughout the movie. Why did it decide to turn up at that moment?
The teachers continuously letting our heroes off when they are seemingly caught red handed, without the slightest hint (mostly) as to what they are thinking when they do so.
Hagrid sending our heroes into the mouth of the spider patrol when he must have known after 30+ years of his relationship with the spiders what would happen.
Harry and Ron leaving the safe areas of the school willy-nilly and yet not a single fellow student warns them of the `danger out there'.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The movie makers seem to have missed something. In a book, the author can explain a characters thoughts behind the actions. On screen, the director has to `show' what the character is thinking and in some cases, has to amend he dialog from the original text to show this. Otherwise the question of `why' hangs around everything that happens.
So apart from the plodding nature of the story, and the confusing character motivation, what else did I think?
I thought the acting was ordinary. Come on Ron and Harry. There are other facial expressions.
The imagery and sound, however, are brilliant. I was often impressed by the quality of the scenes on display and did think to myself on occasions `wow, that's good'. The story, this time around, did contain some inventiveness (e.g. the diary) and some excellent new characters (Myrtle). It was far from all bad. I just expected better than the original.
And lastly, I'm just not happy with the way our young hero stumbles into success. He is not a character whom I would like my children to associate with role model material. Perhaps this is a problem with the book storyline, but I expect a hero to have hero qualities, and not to just get lucky time and time again. How about some cunning, some fearlessness, some initiative or some moral fibre for our hero. Anything (except the obvious - that he wins) to separate him from the lesser boys around him.