Watchable, but not great.

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2002)

I didn't think "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" was an improvement over the first Harry Potter movie. The special effects were better for the most part, but this time I didn't walk out of the theater with the feeling of having seen something reasonably exciting, magical, well-scripted and entertaining, as I did last time. The movie looked like a montage of disjointed episodes, each of which was there mainly for the purpose of showing off its special effects. It had valuable moments (both visually and conceptually, and more of the former), but those were few.
Now, this film is considered by many to be much "darker". I agree: the overwhelming quantity and frequency of various monsters are enough to inflict nightmares on younger children. Still, the danger almost never feels real, its emotional and visual level remaining at that of a video game.
Of the Harry Potter series, I only read the first book, and although I found it well-written, it was nothing my imagination hadn't been challenged with before. Knowing that the second film sticks pretty closely to the original, I would say my criticism is directed in equal measure towards the books: despite some entertaining, perhaps even original moments along the way, there is just not enough substance to either the plot or the underlying ideas. The film medium has a chance to bring out the best in Rowling's writings, which is why in this rare case I prefer Harry Potter movies over Harry Potter books, but these movies inevitably inherit the books' fundamental flaws.
All in all, "The Chamber of Secrets" wasn't a waste of my time, but it lacked coherence and, more importantly, sincerity and confidence in the messages it was trying to get across, and as a result, it had little impact.