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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.
Me sah Dobby, sah...
Wow, the resemblence was quite unsettling.
I think this article does a great job of explaining why Harry Potter is a fraud.
Not to put too fine a point on it--the first movie was fun (and reminded me of my Oxford days, with good reason), but I was always uncomfortable with the messiah-like qualities given potter in the film. The article does a great job of expounding on them.
I've never read the book, so maybe someone who has could explain this..
Why where the spiders always leaving in a row just after each attack. Why where they there in the first place?
Did I miss something?
I'm in my late forties and I love the Harry Potter series. But then I'm a pagan too, and when I see the "religious right" getting hugely bent out of shape over "Heathen Harry" I can actually see the world get just a little bit back into alignment again. Best of all I love the term "muggle." It describes my religious opponents so well! Some day I'm going to meet Jery Fallwell or Pat Robertson and I'll put on my Hagris accent and say, "And I suppose a great muggle like you is going to...."
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
Because most people don't read.
Apparently you've never heard of Harry Potter. This series has brought more people [back] to reading than any other. I almost never read books and I've read Harry Potter. I can name about 10 adults and even more kids with the same experience.
I thought this movie was great and that if the story wasn't the weakest of the series it would be much better than the first movie. My favorite book was the 3rd, so I'm really excited about next year's movie.
... don't like Harry Potter.
I watched it on Friday, and (having never read the books) was surprised at how dark and spooky the film was. I'll have to investigate the books, but if the film is representative I would not let young children have much to do with Harry Potter.
Come on, I'd hardly call writing on the walls with blood, petrification, giant man-eating spiders, plants which kill with their screams, trees which try to whack people to death who come too close and the prejudice of some characters towards those not of "pure" blood Seasame Street material.
Of course, the fundamentalists are a bit over the top in their reaction to the Harry Potter phenonemon but they do have a point.
You know why I like LotR more than Harry Potter? The Harry Potter books are elitist. You're worthless unless you have innate magical ability - just look at how people without these abilities are ridiculed time and time again. LotR is about how even the most normal, average people can make a difference
J.K. Rowling strikes me as the worst sort of snob - someone who's suffered through what many other unfortunate people have experienced, but learned nothing except contempt for those who have not managed to escape their situation.
I really enjoyed 'The Chamber of Secrets.'
:) But I won't give away any more than that.
I had two big problems with the first Harry Potter movie. Firstly, there was no plot; it was all backstory and setup and wide-eyed kids being led on a field trip through Fantasyland, and then at the very end, Chris Columbus says 'oh yeah, there's a bad guy too' and provides a meager showdown. There wasn't nearly enough tension through the first movie to drive the plot. Secondly, in the first movie (and the first book, too) Harry doesn't really do anything, he just gets towed through the events by the plot and by the people around him. He doesn't really make any difficult decisions which define his character.
But the second movie hits the ground running. All the messy exposition is out of the way; the characters are already established, so Columbus can start doing things with them right away. And there are plenty of times when the secondary characters leave the limelight for a little while, giving Harry the chance to show what he's made of.
The computer graphics are really well done. The flying car is terrific. Dobby is rendered well. The only thing they've still got to work on is movement: Dobby shouldn't bob and weave like a Don Bluth character every time the camera's on him, and birds have short quick motions, not smooth fluid motions.
There's one scene with Dobby where he looks like he's trying really hard to be Episode II Yoda.
So this film was fun, and I hope the other four I'll be seeing in the next few weeks (Treasure Planet, Die Another Day, LotR: The Two Towers, ST: Nemesis) are as good. This is a great movie season.
P.S.: I was surprised there was no 'In Memory of Richard Harris' dedication anywhere to be seen.
P.P.S.: Stay 'til the end of the credits for another laugh.
OTOH, I thought although the first book was better than the second book, as a movie, the second one is superior. Better acting, better special effects, more of a specific plot to keep things moving along. This one's definitely darker and gorier (not that there's a /lot/ of gore) than the first one too.
I'm still not sure if I'm going to bother spending money to see this Harry Potter film.
After the first few minutes of the first movie I just felt myself wanting to go read the book instead. I know that it's hard to remain true to the original material while also bringing something new to it, but this director couldn't get any closer to the source material without a restraining order. But then some of my favorite bits were cut out for time constraints.
Also, I always felt wary after finding out that the director's previous work included Home Alone.
Ah well. The books aren't that hard to read, people. They cost less than a movie admission and have much better effects if your imagination is halfway decent.
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
I did not read any of the books (and have no plans too, they sound stupid). Though I did watch the first movie. I thought the movie itself was stupid too. Or, maybe a better word is mediocre. In other words, it wasn't a waste of time, though I wouldn't (actively) reccomend that anyone bother seeing it.
Though, I was looking at the characters in the movie. And I mean either the character, the actor, or both.
Harry Potter himself did a horrible job. I think he can't act very well. Reminds me of the craze over Home Alone. Also a stupid movie with a horrible main actor.
Hermione is the absolute best actress is the film. She does an excellent job of playing the character (I don't meant in reference to the book, just that she was very consistent). To use the MBTI, she's an INFJ, and does an unbelieveably well job of acting it out. I'm wondering about anyone agrees with that, what they think about her in the second movie.
The red-haired kid. He does a very good job of his character too. Right down to the goofy smile. He just didn't seem to stand out to me in the movie, but that was due to the parts given him. I was wondering if they gave him more in the second movie and if he acted well.
The big guy on the flying motorcycle. Nice job too. (ISTP).
The other characters didn't seem to have enough show time for me to care about their skills.
Overall, I'd like to know because the only reason I'd care to see the second movie would be to see (Myeres-Birggs/Keirsey) character types done well.
On a side note, I find it odd that all the main "good guys" are introverts (Harry, Hermione, the red-haired kid, and the big flying motorcycle guy) while all the "bad guys" are extraverts (uncle, slick-haired kid, and the main evil guy). I wonder if Rowling herself is an introvert who had unpleasant runins with entraverts, which would explain her obsession with them.
Have you read my journal today?
That's too bad about Snape. He was absolutley perfect in the first film. I loved the scene where he introduces the students to his potions class. The uncut version from the special features of the dvd is even better!
but Richard Harris's Dumbledore gets a lot of scenes.
Ahh, but good news about Dumbledore! His is probably the most interesting character in the first book, but some of his best lines got truncated.
Honestly, I don't know what the series will do without Richard Harris (he died recently). David Heyman, the producer of Harry Potter has already admitted that Harris is "irreplaceable". He's not just giving a polite eulogy either. Harris was spot on as Dumbledore. In fact his calm, reasoned, lilting interpretation added to my appreciation of the old wizard.
Richard Harris will be sorely missed.
P.S. Not to dismiss Harris's other roles in a varied and interesting career, but I don't want to stray off topic.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
I find it very amusing the way Hollywood tries to sneak around Rowling's very tight control of the characters. Neither Harry nor Ron (or any of the staff) are particularly good-looking, and so they're cast as such. But for any character where there's room to maneuver -- the quidditch captain Oliver Wood in the first film, and Tom Riddle in this one -- the actors cast are really good-looking. And to judge by the number of fan sites for these actors (Sean Biggerstaff and Christian Coulson, respectively) this sneaky approach to hooking in the adolescent female market is paying off.
Not that I'm complaining, of course. Coulson is well worth the £4.50 admission.
The first movie was riddled with errors.
Here are the mistakes that fans have picked out for Harry Potter II courtesey of Movie Mistakes:
When Harry and Ron are sitting in the hall doing work and Hermione comes up to them she swings her leg over and it is bare. Then 2 seconds later as she is sitting down she is wearing tights.
When Harry Potter and Tom Riddle are talking inside the Chamber of Secrets, notice the bridge of Harry's nose. There is a small piece of duck tape under the bridge of the glasses to hold them in place.
When Ron and Harry are escaping from the spiders in the flying car the passenger's side window that broke earlier hitting the willow tree is not broken, you can see Ron's reflection. A minute later you see that the window is broken again.
During the final moments in the Chamber, Harry overcomes Tom Riddle (Voldemort) when putting the Basilisk tooth through the diary. If you watch carefully, you will notice that Harry is keeping his right arm idle, as it has also been posioned by the tooth. He keeps striking the diary and finally closes it for one final attack on the cover. Right before he closes it, you see his left hand still poised in the air with the tooth, but as they cut to the closing of the book right away, they show Harry's left hand closing the book with no sign of the tooth. Now they cut back to Harry's face and his left arm is still up holding the tooth.
At the beginning of the scene near the end of the movie with Lucius Malfoy fuming at Dubledore in his office, Malfoy's hair is fanned back behind his shoulders. The lighting in the room illuminates the back of his neck, where you can see his real, short brown hair.
When Harry first meets Dobby, Dobby is bouncing on the bed. There is a bulletin board of some kind with a Gryffindor flag thing on it. A couple of minutes later, the flaggy thing is still there, but the board itself is gone.
In the second to last scene when Dumbledore is talking to Harry and Ron, Ron's hair is a bit roughed and has a big cowlick. In the next shot, the cowlick is gone and both Ron and Harry's hair is neat.
In the scene where Harry has the bones in his arm regrown, we see him move his hand just before he sees Dobby, although he later claims that his arm has not healed yet. He also never shows any pain in this scene, while Madame Pomfrey told him the regrowing process would be painful.
In the scene when Harry, Ron, and Hermoine find Mrs. Norris petrified, the rest of the school comes rushing to them. How does the rest of the school find out about the attack? They couldn't of heard the Bastilik because they don't speak parsel-tongue. Harry, Ron, and Hermoine were also the first ones to discover the attack.
When Harry goes through the second door to get into the heart of the Chamber where he sees Ginny, the door closes slowly behind him. Then somehow Fawkes manages to fly though a solid two foot thick wall with the hat, how does he do this?
When the girl's restroom is flooding, Harry and Ron are going there and in the hallway, the water is about an inch high. In the bathroom, there are drains and the water hardly comes up to 1/4 inch. This is easy to see when Harry picks up Riddle's diary.
When Ron and the Weasley twins come to pick up Harry from the Dursleys in the flying car, they fly over hundreds of houses. How is it then that we and Harry can hear the car when it is quite a distance away, but the people who live in the houses that the car flies over can't? The car isn't even invisible at the time.
When Harry first meets Dobby, Dobby is moving all about, yet Harry is just focused on one spot.
When Harry is looking at the journal, a bright light appears right in his face and eyes, yet his pupils don't shrink.
When Hermoine takes the Polyjuice Potion, she takes on characteristics of a cat. Note that she took it before Harry did, yet Harry's wore off first. The Polyjuice Potion lasts for 1 hour no matter what you take the form of.
After the basilisk is killed, and Harry talks to Dumbledore, the sword used is lying on the desk, covered in blood. Harry picks it up, and it's clean and shiny. Later, when it's back onthe desk, it's all messy again.
The basilisk shown in the movie must be at least sixty feet long and 5-10 feet across. It would NOT be able to fit through pipes of any kind.
When Lockhart falls down the hole into the Chamber of Secrets, we hear him hit the ground a second or two later. When Ron and Harry jump down, not only do they take longer to get down, they also slide down the pipe, rather than fall straight down.
In the Quidditch scene, Harry breaks his right arm, but as he sits up after he falls off his broom, he leans directly on it.
In the first film, we see that Susan Bones (the red haired girl) is sorted into Hufflepuff, however throughtout the Chamber of Secrets, Susan not only has her classes with the Griffyndors BUT is also wearing a Griffyndor tie
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Anyway: if you liked the first movie, you'll like the second. If you didn't like the first movie at all, you'll feel the same about the second -- it's not qualitatively different.
The movie was actually fairly scary, and the action scenes were done quite well. If I was taking small children I would be a bit concerned. Considering that the third and fourth books were both darker and considerably more scary than the first two books, I'll be interested to see where the movies go. And if the Chamber of Secrets goes 2:40, is the Goblet of Fire going to be a six hour long epic? There will have to be more adaptation for the later books, and the director and script writer are going to have to put their own voices into those movies.
And if you haven't read the books, just read them before you see the movies. The books are easy and enjoyable reads, and there's so many copies about you should be able to borrow one easily.
And let me be probably one of the few people that disliked it.
The personalities of the characters were different (Hermione isn't cool under pressure in the books, for instance; Dumbledore isn't just a nice grandfather type - he's actually quite amusing, making his character carry more weight when he occasionally DOES get serious), the quiddich match was ALL wrong (quiddich and flying are about freedom to Harry - do you ever get that feeling from the movie? Not really) and the sorting het didn't even sing. There's more than that, but I could come up with a list of things that I think fundamentally flaw the movie that's literally pages long. As my girlfriend said, it was like someone did a quick book report, and made it a movie.
I'm pretty amenable to Book-to-Movie conversions, but the movie was a pale shadow of the book. I LOVED LotR. I even liked Johnny Mnemonic. I'll probably never rent Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone again, let alone buy it, which is dissapointing to me.
I'll see the second one, but I've got the same expectations of it. I hope I'm wrong.
Stephen Notley (Bob the Angry Flower cartoonist) seems to think similarily to me, though. You can read his review of the second movie here.
Um, the central story in LotR is about a hobbit named Frodo. And there is no mention of God in LotR. You appear to have J.R.R. Tolkien confused with another fabulous fantasy writer, namely C.S. Lewis.
That said, I prefer LotR in book form to Harry Potter in book form, but Harry Potter in movie form (based on the first movie from each set) is (so far) better than LotR. The Harry Potter folks seem to be sticking better to the book, and considering how LONG both movies were, the HP movies did a much better job of having fewer boring spots. Maybe the LotR people can cut about 30 minutes from the TT films by not having full minute pan shots in between each scene.
I do not have a signature
My vote goes to Tim Burton. the books get increasingly dark as the series progresses... and if anyone can make a dark, bleak movie, it's Burton!
sure, it might be a little scary for the kids, but - j k rowling is always warning them that this is not a kids series. people die, their children are tormented by nightmares of their screams... this is not a cheerful series!
so - anyone who's read the third book - imagine how burton would show harry's dementor-driven hallucinations of his parents pleading with voldemort for their lives, begging him to leave the boy. i think it would be appropriately chilling.
The reason Chris Columbus is being replaced is the same reason he was chosen for Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets in the first place: he has consistently done well directing child actors. The main characters are 11 to 12 years old in the first two books/films, but teenagers thereafter. Columbus's talent as a director is making movies about and for kids. Which the first two movies are, and the rest won't be.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
I haven't read the book, but I went to see the movie the night it came out (I was interested in the spectacle of people dressing up, and was sadly disappointed that there weren't more people in costume) and what surprised me the most was the way that this one played with european folklore in a way that the first one did not. For one thing, Chamber of Secrets followed the structure of a fairy tale in a way that I didn't see in the first movie. It had the hero/object-saught axis and the helper/villain axis pretty clearly defined, which is not something that you see in a film very often, even a film that does pay homage to the fairy tale. Also, Dobby and the manner in which he can be freed comes straight out of a European legend involving a household spirit who is presented with a set of clothes in appreciation for all his work, and then takes the set of clothes and leaves. Historically, clothes were often the payment at the end of a servant's term of service, so it was interesting to see that reflected in the movie. I had a whole list of other explicit references to folklore, but now I forget. Anyway, for me (as a folklorist I suppose), that was the most interesting part of the movie.
By the way, this movie got me excited to read the books (and for the next movie) in a way that the first did not.
Adam
The rumour was that they weren't happy with the non-ILM effects, which more-or-less has been confirmed.
That's really not the way things happened.
See, the first movie was filmed in order; the first scene was shot first, and the last scene last. This is not a terribly uncommon thing to do on a long shoot with kids of that age-- 10-12 or so. In fact, if you watch the first movie kinda carefully you can see that the kids grow up just a little through the film. In particular, Rupert Grint's voice starts to change slightly in the middle.
A consequence of this is the fact that some special effects sequences couldn't be started until close to the end of principle photography. Some of the biggest sequences in the movie-- like the Quiddich match, in particular-- were done in about three months. That's just not enough time.
This time around, they did things differently. They shot the most effects-laden scenes first-- everything with Dobby, the Quiddich scenes, the stuff with the basilisk-- first, and shipped them off to the FX houses. They had nine months to do those sequences this time around instead of three. The difference is clear.
So it's not so much that they weren't happy with the FX on the first film because the work was shoddy; it's just that they didn't have enough time in the schedule to do it any better.
The source on this, by the way, is Chris Columbus, in a recent interview with Charlie Rose.
I write in my journal
Moreover, I think it was poorly edited and could be vastly improved with a directors cut edition.
This is the director's cut. Chris Columbus, being executive producer, gets the absolutely final say in the cut of the film. There are scenes that were shot but ultimately cut-- which have been saved for the DVD, by the way-- but it was Columbus himself who made those calls.
This is the one-and-only "director's cut" of this film.
I write in my journal
Let me preface this by saying that I did quite enjoy both the HP movies, and the books for each.
However, something that always bothered me about the HP stories is the seemingly complete lack of responsibility by any of the adults.
The most glaring was the Malfoy-Potter duel in the Chambe of Secrets. If I were a teacher, and had told two students to use magic to "disarm only" and one sent a poisonous snake after the other - no matter how well the other could talk to it - that student would be expelled and probably face criminal charges. I mean, come on, he (at least partially) tried to kill someone!
Or with the quidditch match - Harry is chased after by a modified bludger that is obviously trying to seriously hurt him, and the adults don't do a damn thing! I mean, Hermione says that she can't zap it because she might hit Harry - but certainly someone like Dumbledore could? But none of the adults do anything!
I mean, it's not sending the best message to children - it's something akin to "You're on your own, and don't rely on the adults to help you." Grrr.
(Although I was pretty upset with the "deus ex machinae" endings of the first two. Harry's going to face certain death with - right in the nick of time, the car drives up. Or the phoenix flies in with the hat. Or his mom sacrifices herself, or or or...ugh.)
Heh. After rereading that, I realize it sounds pretty bad - but I swear I did like the movies. I just had some serious reservation about them...
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
If you watch a movie based on a book before you've read the book, then the book will fill in details and often provide an alternate plot or story.
If you watch a movie based on a book after you've read the book, then the movie will often bastardize the book and ruin the whole story for you from that point forward.
So I rarely read books if I know there is a movie -- I only read them (like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter) after the fact in order to fill in details.