‘Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets’, the second film in the ‘Harry Potter’ series takes a turn from the dark side, well and truly shifting it away from the children’s fantasy that some described the first film of. Even the inclusion of a character called Dobby that had the potential to do to the ‘Harry Potter’ series what JarJar Binks did to the ‘Star Wars’ series doesn’t detract from the fact that this film is far better than the original… especially when it comes to the acting.
Before the second year starts at Hogwarts Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is visited by a house-elf by the name of Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones) that warns him not attend school this year because evil things are to occur. While Harry and Ron (Rupert Grint) do have some trouble getting there when they do arrive they discover that Hogwarts is under attack by the threat that the Chamber Of Secrets will be opened bringing death to ‘mudblood’ students. When many learn that Harry has the ability to speak to snakes it seems that he may be the student that is causing the evil… can the heroic Professor Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh) be the one person that can clear Harry’s name and protect him.
Director, Chris Columbus does a magnificent job making this film so dark as there was nothing listed on his resume that could suggest that he was capable of such a feat. It just didn’t seem likely that the man who directed ‘Home Alone’, ‘Nine Months’ and ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ could possibly direct something this dark. Once again screenwriter, Steve Kloves also does a magnificent job turning J.K. Rowling’s novel into a brilliant piece of cinema… it just looks so great on the big screen. The whole mud-blood storyline is also a great way of revealing a hint of ‘racism’ into the storyline… an good lesson for all teenagers to learn about.
The big improvement here however is the vast improvement of the acting of Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint. They are exceptionally better than they were in the first film… even though poor Emma Watson barely gets any screen time this time round. The inclusion of Kenneth Branagh is a great addition to the cast and he brings some light relief to an otherwise dark storyline.
An exceptional follow up to the first film, Columbus does a magnificent job making this film darker than the previous and ‘Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets’ shows just how good this series is getting.
Year: 2002
Director: Chris Columbus
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Toby Jones, Rupert Grint, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Watson
Classification: PG
Runtime: 161 mins
Rating:
