Improved, but still some questions

Rating: 7/10 (8 December 2002)

Harry Potter 2 is a definite improvement on its predecessor. The writers and director have had the confidence to stray further from the text of the book, omitting more of the material which works well on the page but slowed the pace of the first movie to a crawl. They have also shown more judgement about the excisions, with none of the omissions from this movie being as vital as the lack of a sense of Harry's alienation in the first movie.
However the child stars still alternate between "wooden" and "ham". Radcliffe (in the role of Harry) is particularly prone to the former and Grint (Ron Weasley) to the latter.
With the voices of both boys breaking they are starting to seem a little older than the 12 year olds they are playing.
While the pace is definitely better in this movie, I personally found that some of the set pieces were over-extended a little and the final wrap-up could definitely have been accelerated.