Next to this delightfully foul creature, the fantasy’s other wondrous sights - including a flying Ford Anglia, animated gallery portraits and, for the Quidditch grudge match, flying Nimbus 2001 brooms - seem almost old hat. A classic masochist, Dobby whines and moans and whacks himself on the noggin a lot. Then, too, there’s the pointy-nosed, bat-eared elf Dobby, who, enslaved to an unnamed wizard, has the self-image of navel lint. The best of these are a pathetic washroom apparition called Moaning Myrtle (Shirley Henderson) Ron’s Muggle-obsessed father, Arthur (Mark Williams) and the dastardly Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), father of Harry’s bullying classmate Draco (Tom Felton). Harry’s best new role, however, may be that of surrogate dad - to a pesky, fully digitized house elf named Dobby.Īnd “Chamber of Secrets” overall? It’s smartly produced and slightly more streamlined than “Sorcerer’s Stone,” its predecessor, but at almost three hours it’s still too slavishly faithful to its source and will no doubt try the patience (to say nothing of the bladders) of Muggle (or non-wizard) moppets.ĭirector Chris Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves - who take their marching orders from Rowling - still haven’t figured out how to boil down long expository passages to a look or piece of business, and this means another lumpy narrative that doesn’t truly get under way until the climactic 30 minutes, when Harry and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint again) enter the Dark Forest and come face-to-fang with a stroppy arachnid named Aragog.Īnd where is Hermione (Emma Watson), the third and most interesting member of the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry trio, when all this is going on? After conjuring and countering any number of spells, the class brain suffers a most thankless fate: She’s found petrified (as in turned to stone), the victim of the slithering what’s-it from the school’s subterranean lair.Ī number of new names have been added to the Hogwarts roster. Indeed, in Episode 2 of the projected seven-part series, Harry, again played by Daniel Radcliffe, graduates from orphaned punching bag to full-fledged Hogwarts hero - part Sherlock Jr., part sword-brandishing dragonslayer. Harry Potter celebrates his 12th birthday in typical woebegone fashion at the start of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” but that’s OK - the spectacled boy wizard is now more confident, more mature-looking, more interesting in every way.
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