Different Movie, Same Score, Different Reasons

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2002)

To understand the success of the Harry Potter series of books it is important to take a look at the style and layout of the story as it is written JK Rowling. To quote Ron from the books `Bloody brilliant' is about all I can say. Each book has one major story arc which is told in series of short stories. It just so happens that each short story or story arc is a chapter long. In `Chamber of Secrets' the over all story arc about the Heir of Slytherin is divided into eighteen short arcs with each chapter bringing the reader closer to the climax of the story and the final chapter to tie up all the loose ends. In the first movie Chris Columbus and Steven Kloves follow this successful story telling technique pretty well with the movie divided up into several short stories all tied together by Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts and his first encounter with he-who-shall-not-be-named. The problem with this kind of story telling is that it does not translate as well from the printed page to the big screen. (I had hoped the first DVD would have more of the deleted scenes inserted back into the movie) Well the first movie had several good attributes its over-all story line just wasn't one of them. Only dropping one of the short stories and shortening each short story made the story seem a little jumpy and didn't really allow for the character development that the necessary for anyone who hasn't read the book. I liked the first movie by the way. In the second movie CC and SK move to a more traditional idea of story telling for movies rather than use the eighteen short stories from the book the movie is divided into about 10 short story arcs in which several elements of two or more chapters are joined together. The story also elements several little pieces of the story, which while not important seem a little unnerving for them not to be there. For example when Harry takes a wrong turn with the Floo powder we learn about the Malfoy family, yet the movie skips this part. Traditional story telling also creates another minor glitch in terms of story telling, the individual story arcs do not seem to flow as well together in CoS as they did in SS. The transitions are terrible; I hope that the material cut out of the film release is centered around these transitions when the DVD is released. While the missing scenes would be nice, better transitions would make the movie more enjoyable. In the first movie I was very pleased with the acting and casting of every character except Daniel Radcliffe as Harry. Emma Watson and Rupert Grint seemed much more comfortable in the first film than Daniel did. Emma and Rupert plus Tom Felton just were more believable. In his portrayal of Harry in the Second move Daniel seems more comfortable to say the least. He generally is not outclassed by the actors around him. While some might complain about his growth spurt between the movies, it is only natural he is a young man you know and it does occur in the Book series to some extent, just not as noticeable as it is on film. The casting of the adults (Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltran, Alan Rickman, Richard Branagh, and Jason Isaacs) is too good to believe. Each one of them fits perfectly into their rolls, as if JK Rowling had them in mind when she wrote the book. The death of Richard Harris will make it hard to fill his role as Dumbledore. However with so many characters in the movie, many characters were not given the screen time they needed to display their talents and develop their characters. Scenes showing Ginny Weasley and the general dislike of the Malfoy family could have really tied the movie together. Noticeable missing from the film was Zoe Wanamaker as Madam Hooch who was written out for some reason. CC has done a better job with use of Special Effects and CGI in CoS than in SS. First each effect is less noticeable on screen (with a few exceptions) and they blend into the background this brings the story and the characters to the forefront. There are a couple of places I wondered why the effects were not more believable, the scene with the car and the whomping willow for instance. The tree was just too stiff and the car took too little damage. In the first movie there are only a couple of external scenes that show even parts of the school and yet in the second movie the use of panning shots of Hogwarts also fills out the school and makes it more believable for the audience. Overall the CoS is an above average film. I still do not understand the fascination with making shorter films. The change to a more traditional way of telling a story on the big screen helped this movie for adults and may have hurt it from holding the interest of younger children. The young actors all seemed to have improved their performance from the first move, but I would have like to see more of Rupert Grint not being scared during the movie. For a movie that is already 160 minutes long the CoS needed to be about 18 to 30 minutes longer to fill in the story and improve the transition between the scenes. Several interesting scenes either were cut out or left out of the script which upset the ten year old next sitting next to me in the theater. The use of CGI and SFX were much better in CoS than in SS and it really helped bring the actors and the story to the attention of the movie. Out of Ten Stars I would give the movie 8 stars, same rating as SS but for vastly different reasons.