Enjoyable with decent (if over indulgent) plot

Rating: Null/10 (1 September 2003)

Trapped at his home by his foster family, Harry is visited by a house elf and warned not to return to Hogwarts as it holds great danger for him. However this only serves to make him want to go all the more, despite the fact that many barriers seem to spring up in his path. When he arrives there he finds much changed, not least a new teacher in the shape of Professor Lockhart. The danger arrives when someone opens the mythical (and hidden) chamber of secrets and releases a beast that aims to kill all the mixed blood wizards. Himself a suspect, Harry must race to find not only the beast, but also the one who released it, before it kills again.
After having a poor impression from the first film, I decided to skip this at the cinema  the idea of an average film being worth the horror of sharing a cinema with talking children being a major factor. However on DVD I decided to give it a go and was happy to see that it was actually quite an enjoyable film that has a good plot to it. I still feel that the running time (almost 3 hours) is far too long for this type of film and that some brave editor needs to take it and really be harsh with the material, the plot here sort of demands the long run but at times scenes are too indulgent and the cuts to reduce time could have been found without too much loss.
The film does move quite easily though, despite the 3 hour run. The problem is that children will generally lose interest faster than adults, making it harder on the rest of us to stay with the film  I mean, how many toilet breaks will be taken during this film? Despite this I did find it involving and the film kindly tailored itself to be user-friendly to both fans and those like me who have never had the desire to read a single HP book. The material is probably too dark for children and I doubt many younger than 10 will actually have followed the full run of the narrative.
The action scenes are an area that could have been trimmed down. I don't know if the film is trying to stay very true to the book but I did feel that some scenes (the flying car, the Quidditch games) could have been either reduced or removed altogether. Some scenes work very well and are exciting and creepy and this is due to better direction (maybe from not feeling the pressure of starting a franchise?) and also some very good effects.
The cast is still deep in faces and again suffers from not having enough for everyone to do. Radcliffe is a bit better in the lead role but Watson and Grint seem to have been put back into second place despite being a real strength of the first film. Rickman is enjoyable and Branagh is a good choice for the character of Lockhart, OTT enough to be a comedy character but not so much a clown that he is ruled out as a possible bad guy. Richard Harris has little to do and it is sad that when he died most obituaries in the popular press made reference to this role rather than any of his massive back catalogue. Cleese is once again wasted, Maggie Smith gets a few days work out of it and Coltrane serves only as a red herring at several points along the way. Faces from British comedy make for local interest but again it is a problem that the film tries to have the same rich tapestry of characters that I imagine the book did  at some point a disciplined focus is required in this series, imagine the running times once they start making the thicker books in the series with the same approach!
Overall I had no intention of ever watching this film but am glad I gave it a shot. I still feel that it is a little over indulgent and that it needs to be better controlled, but the good plot and enjoyable set pieces made for a good film. I have not been won over enough to see the next chapter in the cinema but I'll get it on video a few years later.