arry Potter (Radcliffe), back in the house on Privet Lane, wonders why he hasn't received any mail all summer from his friends at Hogwarts School. He discovers that a mischievous house elf named Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones) has been stealing his mail. Dobby appears disastrously at the house, warning Harry not to return to Hogwarts.
Imprisoned in his room by Uncle Vernon, Harry is rescued by his pal Ron Weasley (Grint) and his family's flying Ford Anglia.
Ron takes Harry to the Weasleys' ramshackle house, where Ron's little sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright) has been harboring a crush. In a bookstore in Diagon Alley, meanwhile, celebrity wizard Gilderoy Lockhart (Branagh) is signing books. While shopping for school, Harry, Ron and Hermione Granger (Watson) encounter Harry's nemesis, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) and his sinister father, Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs).
Later, when Ron and Harry try to board the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross Station, they can't get through. Will they miss the opening of school? Not if Ron can help it. He and Harry take the flying car back to Hogwarts, crash-landing in the school's famous Whomping Willow. They incur the wrath of Professor Snape (Alan Rickman), who calls for their expulsion. But Professor Dumbledore (the late Harris) saves them, assigning them detention instead.
Harry settles in. But he begins to hear a hissing voice muttering "Kill! Kill!"—a voice that no one else can hear. Then he stumbles across the petrified body of Mrs. Norris, groundskeeper Angus Filch's beloved cat, strung up next to ominous graffiti written in blood. The warning is clear: the fabled Chamber of Secrets may have been opened, releasing a creature that is a threat to all Muggle-born students. Students such as Hermione.
Soon, Hogwarts pupils begin to turn up petrified. Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) worries that Hogwarts may have to be closed for good. Harry tries to uncover the truth. But suspicion soon falls on him. Is he the heir to the House of Slytherin and the one responsible for the danger?
Faithful, but with
as many tricks as treats
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the much-anticipated follow-up to last year's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and it reunites many of the same players and behind-the-scenes personnel. But unlike the first movie, which managed to conjure some real magic by bringing author J.K. Rowling's beloved book to life, the second film loses itself in a narrative as gnarled as a Whomping Willow and as diffuse as the ghost of Lord Voldemort.
The sequel shares a weakness with the first movie, by trying to be too faithful to Rowling's rambling, episodic books. But while that may have worked in the first movie, which served mainly to introduce the franchise's characters and mythology, it ill serves the second, which sets out to deal with serious issues such as racism, vanity and the nature of evil.
In Chamber of Secrets, filmmakers have tried to stuff the movie with too many tricks and characters, while giving short shrift to motivations, setups and payoffs that are necessary to focus the story. The film hints at the book's conspiracy among the Dark Forces, for example, but fails to follow it up; similarly, the movie does little with threads about fathers and sons, Harry's affinity with an evil counterpart, Hagrid's (Robbie Coltrane) youthful indiscretions and any of a number of other themes.
Instead, the movie settles on lining up familiar scenes that don't have much to do with one other—an errant trip to Knockturn Alley, Lockhart's duel with Snape, a fast-paced new Quidditch sequence that serves little purpose other than to show off the filmmakers' improved technology. The resulting movie feels overstuffed, scattered and random and—at two hours and 20 minutes—way too long.
The three stars—Radcliffe, 13; Grint, 14; and Watson, 12—have grown noticeably since the first movie, with some of the awkwardness of incipient adolescence. Radcliffe remains a credible and sympathetic hero, but Grint mugs and whines a little too much. Watson is as charming as ever, but is underused. Most distressingly, the trio's friendship, which formed the heart and soul of the first film, is downplayed in the sequel, with Watson out of the action for most of the last act.
