Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
directed by Chris Columbus

This is the second of J.K. Rowling's books about Harry Potter to be made into a movie. While competently made with some reasonable acting and some pretty exciting parts, the movie does not deviate much from the book, robbing the movie of some of its potential excitement with those in the audience who have already memorised the book.

The movie covers Harry Potter's second year as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And it starts off as a bad year for Harry; he is warned not to return to Hogwarts by a house-elf, barely gets rescued from his prison home by his friend Ron Weasley and then nearly gets expelled when he damages a valuable tree at Hogwarts by flying into it with a car. But all that is but a prelude of the chilling events that are to occur at Hogwarts when a sinister message about a 'Chamber of Secrets' is discovered and students began to be petrified by an unseen monster that only Harry can hear. Could Harry be the one is responsible for the monster's appearance at Hogwarts?

The movie follows the book very closely but even those who have not read the book should be able to follow the events in the movie. Those who have read the book will probably enjoy finding that many of their favourite scenes have been incorporated into the movie.

Unfortunately, the overall structure of the film suffers because it attempts to put in as many scenes from the book as possible without making the film too long, making the connection between scenes and characters brief. Some pivotal secondary characters in the book, like the photo-taking Colin Creevey or the Harry worshipping Ginny Weasley, barely appear and their roles in the movie never made clear. Kenneth Branagh obviously has a lot of fun as Gilderoy Lockhart but even he does not get enough screen space to make it plain why the girl students and witches swoon for him while the teachers and boys don't think much of him. But Moaning Myrtle is entertaining as the ghost who haunts a girls lavatory and provides the pivotal clue to solve the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets.

In the end, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is an entertaining and watchable film but suffers by following the book too closely. This results in a lack of continuous flow in the movie (with scenes from the book being compressed into the movie) and not does not allow enough space for the characters to really develop. Still, it has its highlights (the flying car, the thrilling Quiddich match, the meeting in the forest) but movies should be made up of more than just highlights.

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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets directed by Chris Columbus

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
directed by Chris Columbus