Not bad, if you don't forget that it's for kids

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2006)

I actually love fantasy. Well, it doesn't go as far as loving every bad movie if it's only about swords and magic ('Dungeons and Dragons' sucked, for instance), but it's one of my favorite genres. I'm also reading quite some fantasy books, but after having read few sentences of Harry Potter, I decided that it was too much a book for children and thus stopped reading on. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (by the way, the German title would be translated "..and the Chamber of Scare") thus is my first deeper insight in Rowlings fantasy world. And the fantasy part of it actually isn't all too convincing. Dumbledore is probably the mightiest magician around, right? So what's he doing instead of saving his school of magical arts? Letting a little boy do the job? Imagine Gandalf not caring all too much about the ring and all that, or imagine Ogion from the (not bad) TV fantasy "Earthsea" die from a throwing dagger.. Fantasy movies are all about the magic, and thus the greatest spell-caster should maybe be somehow involved in and capable of saving his world. But then, let me think about it...it's more a movie for kids, right? So the hero must be a kid, even if he seems to be quite uninvolved in the whole plot. And if you try to see it through a kid's eyes, with all those nice effects, everybody flying around, the action scenes and some more or less scary creatures, it's fun to watch. I could even imagine that Harry's two best friends weren't pains in the neck in my point of view if I was ten or eleven years old. 5 out of 10.