An awful lot of story for even a long kids movie!

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2002)

Having recently re-read the book prior to viewing the film, I won't bore anyone with listing the changes or omissions, most of them made sense and worked with the flow of the story. I enjoyed the book version of "Chamber of Secrets" more than the book version of the "Sorcerer's Stone" so I went to the theater expecting quite a bit. The first film exceeded my expectations and, again, this raised my level of expectations for the second film. Richard Harris, Kenneth Branagh, and Daniel Radcliffe are all quite good and although the direction is brisk and involving some of the editing is not quite as crisp as "Sorcerer's Stone". The Quidittch match is great and there are no distractions in the form of obvious computer generated characters. Doby, the house elf, is one of the better CGI characters I have yet seen. Is it perfect? I think the story is just too involved for a 2 hour kids film. There are a few layers of complexity and depth that simply work as literature and don't quite translate to the medium. !SPOILER!

It is nice to see Hagrid get some accolades since he is never publicly recognized in the book.