Brilliantly Done and Beautiful to Look At

Rating: 10/10 (25 November 2002)

As a huge fan of the books, it's a delight to see how closely both of the movies have followed them. "Chamber of Secrets" was exhilarating and enthralling from beginning to end. In fact, I was so engrossed that I didn't realize until I got out of the film and looked at my watch that it had been close to a three hour movie.
As a reader, I develop a picture in my mind of the world of Hogwarts as the author describes them, and "Chamber" managed to live up to my own imagination, which few movies-based-on-books do. The action was fast and well done, not carrying on too long before moving to the next scene, the CGI was believable (although, as much as I loved Dobby in the book, I have to admit that he was a bit annoying in the movie) and those kids are so well casted for their roles it's almost amazing that three so young have truly mastered their characters - Daniel Radcliffe *IS* Harry Potter as I always imagined him to be like.
As a twenty something generation-x'er, I enjoyed it just as much as the younger demographics (incidentally, there seemed to be more people my age than children going to see this movie, but that might be attributed to the 9:55 p.m. time slot in which I saw it), and found myself standing and clapping along with the rest of the theater, as well as the characters in the film in the final sequence. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets truly transcends age to be something everyone can enjoy.

And enjoy it is exactly what I did. Bring on "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"! :-)