An improvement - but still made for small children

Rating: 8/10 (27 April 2009)

On a purely technical basis, the first Harry Potter movie was horrid. It was awful. But as an origin story, I let it slide with the expectation that it would be somewhat awkward because the first novel isn't all that good either. Working with whatever material they had, they managed to churn *something* out that wasn't completely embarrassing.
The second film is, overall, pretty good, but suffers from trying-to-please-every-fan-too-much-itis in a manner similar to the fourth film. There's some reference to every major scene in the book, some things are truncated, and a few of the "expected" scenes and/or lines are included to make the little kids "ooh" and "aah" with happiness. Which I suppose is fine, but looking back at it as an adult, I feel like I was cheated out of my money. Most major events are still included with sufficient emphasis and it seems like a much more faithful adaptation of the book as closely as possible, but with some serious drawbacks.
The plot continues Harry's second year at Hogwarts, where he's got to deal initially with some exposure to the Wizarding equivalent of racism, the first real encounter he has with intolerance and bigotry on a harsher level than in the previous novels. Then, a fabled monster is released from the innards of the castle, said to be hiding there for hundreds of years. Turns out, one of the school founders, who subscribed to the bigotry against Muggle-born wizards, placed him there expressly to kill them when it was released. The majority of the story takes a sort of detective mystery theme, where Harry, Ron, and Hermione set out to find out who/what is attacking the students.
As far as pacing and plot goes, the film succeeds in building up suspense and a story - to some degree. A number of the attacks are cut out to conserve time, and they don't show the castle being locked down as much, etc. but overall they manage the job. What the film suffers from heavily is the literal adaptation of dialogue. Instead of improving where it needed to be improved, they adapted it very literally and it relies too much on awkward exposition. The most striking scene that irritates me is when Fawkes heals Harry's wound, and he goes "of course! Phoenix tears have healing powers!" I half expected him to give a thumbs up to the camera and grin. There was no damn need to put that dialogue into the film. Another instance was where the trio happen upon the blood written sign in the corridor, and Hermione reads the sign aloud. I realize they're doing this because it's unlikely a little kid is going to remember what Dumbledore said earlier in the movie, or even necessarily be able to read the words on the wall fast enough while it's on the screen, but for the rest of us, it's just annoying.
Still, worth watching and I'd recommend it as a much more faithful adaptation, even though it's probably not as good a film as many of the others.