Too slow to get going, skip it and watch the third movie!

Rating: 5/10 (4 December 2005)

I really didn't like this movie. For many people, this is their least favourite book in the Harry Potter series, but I don't think that's why the movie is so painful. It is unfortunate in having a a really poor director.
Dobby is the CGI Potter equivalent of Jar Jar Binks, I thought he was terrible. It's ironic that I imagined Dobby very much as a gremlin type of creature in my head, and Chris Columbus was actually a writer for Gremlins! If he'd made Dobby into a Gremlin, I think I would have liked him much more.
As a small but annoying detail, someone should tell Rupert Grint that acting consists of more than a breaking voice and raised eyebrows. That boy's range consists of confused and scared, which coincidentally involves the same movements of his furrowed brow.
Now there are obvious, practical reasons why screenplays differ from novels, you are working with a much smaller time-frame, some scenes are difficult to translate to a visual medium, sometimes a scene will have to be changed or represented differently to create the same tension or dramatic effect. It's understandable.
What's not understandable is the writing and directorial decisions for most of Chamber of Secrets. Many of the scenes are ponderous and slow, the dialogue is forced and perfunctory, there is no sense of tension or building mood. I'm so glad Chris Columbus was replaced as director, he just doesn't seem to be able to get any sparks out of the story or his cast. It might look good but it's just so slow paced, I just can't get over it! There are too many times when Rowling's original dialogue is ignored and the scenes changed for no apparent reason at all. When real lines are included, they are taken out of context or not used properly at all. It makes me wonder if the actors read the book at all. Mrs Weasly is just a caricature, when she tells Mr Weasly that Fred, George and Ron rescued Harry, her acting makes me cringe, its such a pantomime performance when she is supposed to be really mad!
But perhaps the best example of how the movie completely fails to represent any spirit or essence of the novel is when Malfoy is revealed as the new Seeker for Slytherin and insults Hermione. He calls her a mud-blood, one of the worst and most insulting names for a muggle-born, and yet in the movie it barely gets a reaction. There's no outcry from anyone but Ron, who after a good two seconds of awkward silence says, "You'll pay for that one Malfoy, east slugs!" (almost lazily and with very little rage or indignation!). The idea of 'bood purity' is the central concern of the novel, but it's just not explored well at all in the movie. There' barely any passion in the performances, and it makes for a painfully boring and watered down version of the novel.
This is the worst Harry Potter movie out of the four so far made. That said, it does have some redeeming features. I cannot fault the final dramatic sequence within the Chamber of Secrets itself, it's a place not graphically described by Rowling but one which comes to life in the movie, the pipes, the caves and the dramatic entrance door for example. It was sufficiently scary, Harry being chased through the pipes was one of the few really tense scenes of the movie! I thought the diary sequence was done very well, the boy playing Tom Riddle, Christian Coulson was fantastic, brimming with power, arrogance and complexity, easily the best performance of the lot.