Maybe it's just a place holder, but it remains an essential part of the series.

Rating: 7/10 (9 December 2005)

With boy wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) going into his second year at Hogwarts, he gets visited by a "house elf" named Dobby, who warns him not to go. Naturally, Harry doesn't listen to this. But when he does arrive at the school, he finds that there's a number of things not right. And the answer is closer than he thinks.
Obviously, the filmmakers couldn't go straight from "Philosopher's Stone" to "Prisoner of Azkaban", so they had to include "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". This is probably the HP movie which I recommend the least (but make no mistake, I do recommend it). Sometimes, it just seems like a big Hollywood production, but I consider it a good movie nonetheless. The Oregonian's review correctly stated that it maintained the first movie's strength and flaws. Radcliffe plays Potter to perfection, while Rupert Grint and Emma Watson also return as Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, respectively. Aside from the other cast members from the original (Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Griffiths), there are two new ones: Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart (the overstuffed Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher) and Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy (Draco's father). Overall, worth seeing, but I liked "Prisoner of Azkaban" better (I still haven't seen part 4).