Slashdot Mirror
Review: Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets
Most of the cast is back again for the sophomore film. If you liked them before, you'll like them again, even if the boys voices have started changing and everyone is a little taller than they were last november.
The most substantial new character this time around is Gilderoy Lockhart played over the top and on the money by Kenneth Branagh. Alan Rickman's Severus Snape is practically a bit part here, but Richard Harris's Dumbledore gets a lot of scenes.
The general plot is as follows: Harry Returns to Hogwarts for his second year of wizarding school. He keeps getting signals and warnings that there will be trouble, but he ignores them and goes right on in anyway (Wouldn't you if you had his home life?). Anyway, at school students keep turning up petrified and the legend of the Chamber of Secrets revealed. Beyond that there's a little quidditch, rivalry with the other houses, and a mystery needing solving.
Generic, yes. But it's solidly produced and entertaining. Course I'm right in line for next year because I think the next 2 books are superior to the first 2.
As for the FX, I think they're a bit better than last time around. Especially during the Quidditch matches. The first films game sequences looked bad. Everything looked CG. This time around things are much more convincing. They also tackled Dobby the house elf and did him as a full CG character. The rendering on Dobby is just beautiful. Any still shot from his scenes would convince you that they just filmed a house elf right on set. And the fabric moves really well. Unfortunately the motion is all off. His weight feels wrong. His interaction with the set seems like he's a muppet. Hopefully they can nail him down before Goblet of Fire when there are many house elf scenes.
Anyway, I think this film is weaker than the first one, but I think that mostly this is because the book really doesn't add as much to the larger story. It's a solid movie and it stands well on its own feet, but knowing the bigger things yet to come gets me drooling for the next one. I'm hoping that handing the series off to someone besides Chris Columbus will give it a shot in the arm.
but if you haven't read the book, why do you care about the movie?
Because most people don't read.
Actually most people CAN'T read. Look anywhere for literacy stats, it is disgusting.
Some stats show that
High school graduates tend to have public school reading levels. Adults out of school are even worse.
Yes, I'd like to see a film version of Lord of the Rings too. It would be much better than paying to see an advertisement for a DVD which is another advertisement for another DVD which still is a crap version of the book. Three payments and still no evidence that Jackson ever read the book.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Is anyone else offended by the fact that the author of this article doesn't even consider your oppinion valid if you haven't read the stupid book(s)? What a grade A jackass/moron. I guess the person doesn't reallize that some people actually watch movies for the entertainment of seeing a good movie, not for making a comprehensive comparison between it and a book.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Actually, it was quite a good article. It was funny, and it also hit on some of the main problems with the Harry Potter books.
Like the Shakespearean critic (amoung other things) Harold Bloom says, Harry Potter is a set of Disney movies in book form (and now movies again). I read them, and was consistantly dissapointed by the triumph of carictature over character. Harry's normal family is "bad," so they are fat and mean and ugly. Harry Potter is "good" so he is strong and handsome and famous. There is never any progress beyond the superficial. There is never more than a hint of actual moral struggle. The magical world that Rowling sets up is less interesting, less complicated, and more chintzy, than the real world. Sure, Harry Potter can fly on a broomstick, but can he hold an involving conversation with one of the other cardboard cut-out characters?
Am I being unfair to a set of "children's books?" Not at all. In fact, I think great children's literature is at once harder to write and more valuable than any other type of literature. But Harry Potter does not fall into the category of great children's literature. Harry Potter can be entertaining at times, but it doesn't leave you with the feeling that you have read something that might affect you, that might make you into a different person.
I think the superficiality of the slashdot crowd is apparent with the Harry Potter phenomenon. There a million slashdot readers that are all slobering to be the first to prove their Alpha Geekness by insulting N'Sync or Brittany Spears when the chance comes up. But when it comes time to prove that they have some taste that goes beyond the shit the Hollywood media culture is feeding them, they lap it all up like everyone else.
I've re-read my post. It has all the elements of a troll. But I agree with every word, so it's not.
You need to view that site sceptically as anywhere from 60-90% of the "mistakes" are just stupid people nitpicking the movie to death, or are just flat out wrong. Like someone posted a "mistake" for Spider-Man, that when Jameson throws his cigar butt out the window, the Goblin doesn't throw it back in, rather it hits the windowsill and bounces back. I watched for it to happen the second (and third) times I saw the movie, and yes it gets thrown outside the window and is tossed back by the Goblin.
Oh, and use a frikkin spoiler you jerk. I hope somebody told you what happens to Bruce at the end of 6th Sense before you saw the movie.
Is "is fundamentally preoccupied with heavy theological issues" some kind of code for "is boring as all get-out?"
Because if it's not, I don't think I read the same books as you.
I write in my journal
Is it just me or is quidditch one of the stupidest sports ever imagined? It seems clear that Rowling knows little about sports. Almost nothing ever matters in the game except the seekers trying to catch the snitch.
Play Command HQ online
Hermione is a normal (bright) kid. Ron Weasley is a normal kid. Harry Potter is "The Famous Harry Potter" who has, on his own merits, accomplished 100X less than Brittney Spears. If Harry Potter is a normal kid, I'm fucking Jesus Christ.
What I hate about Harry Potter is exactly the fact that he deserves nothing more than what the normal kid receives, but he gets the special treatment fit for some sort of boy-emperor. In fact, the parallels between Harry Potter and The Last Emperor go deep. Well, fuck that. Nobody will be my hero just because of their birth and inheritance. They just don't deserve it.