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HARRY
POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
4/10
USA (US/UK) 2002 : Chris Columbus : 161mins
Harry
Potter’s second year at Hogwarts turns out to be almost exactly the same
as his first. While fans of the books will be delighted, there’s even
less for non-aficionados this time around. And the few newcomers who drift
in without having seen Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone will be completely bewildered,
given how Columbus and screenwriter Steve
Kloves instead dive straight into the action with a bare minimum of exposition,
teenage wizard Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) eluding the oppressive clutches
of his vile relatives and escaping to his real ‘home’, Hogwarts, where
he must foil another dastardly plot involving his arch-enemy Lord Voldemort.
With
the exception of Zoe Wanamaker (who bailed out complaining at the stingy
wages) virtually entire cast from Potter 1 is back, joined by new
faces Kenneth Branagh (as narcissitic fop-wizard Gilderoy Lockhart) and
Jason Isaacs, who sports a fetching Veronica Lake wig as Lucius Malfoy,
father of Harry’s rival Draco (Tom Felton). Though a welcome addition,
Isaacs’ arrival gives Alan Rickman’s Professor Snape a rival in the ‘sneering
villain’ stakes, this diluting Snape’s screen time. As Rickman was, for
most adults, easily the best thing about Philosopher’s Stone, this
means that Chamber of Secrets will exert even less appeal to over-12s
– especially as the third hour yawns into view.
It’s
surely no coincidence that the best kid-pics of recent years, The Iron
Giant and Shrek,
clocked in at a brisk 86 and 90 minutes respectively, while Hayao Miyazaki’s
Spirited Away, which appeals equally to all ages, is considered
something of a marathon at 125 minutes. There are hardly any adult
films, past or present, which could justify Chamber’s 161-minute
running time. And it’s a solid rule that children’s movies, like horrors
and comedies, shouldn’t exceed an hour and a half unless they’re of really
exceptional quality - there’s certainly nothing in Chamber of Secrets
which falls into that category.
The main concern
of young Potter readers is that the films adhere as closely as possible
to the book – which means Kloves has to cram in as many characters and
episodes as he can, often spending an absurd amount of time on superfluous
sub-plots, as when Harry and best pal Ron (Rupert Grint) take a potion
to make them look like Draco’s henchmen. This results in a very laborious,
old-fashioned kind of storytelling, and it would take a much more wizardly
director than Chris Columbus to breathe life into such a bloated, overextended
screenplay.
Every
now and again, Columbus (quite arbitrarily) uses a mild fish-eye lens
to give the widescreen image a slight distortion, but otherwise nearly
all of the shots in Chamber could be seamlessy inserted into Philosopher’s
Stone. Because this isn’t so much a sequel, as another episode in
a wildly elaborate modern version of a Saturday-morning serial. At least
George Lucas’s similarly old-school franchise Star Wars makes an
effort to keep things at least visually interesting by zooming across
the galaxy from planet to planet – the Potter movies suffer by being largely
stuck within the gloomy confines of Hogwarts.
And
diminishing returns have already set in – Chamber of Secrets is
to Philosopher’s Stone as Attack
of the Clones was to Phantom Menace: fine for fans, borderline
unendurable for the rest of us. Alfonso Cuaron faces a stiff task when
he takes over the reins for the next instalment, Prisoner of Azkaban,
due in summer 2004. Cuaron’s Y
Tu Mama Tambien doesn’t offer much grounds for optimism, so paceless
it felt much longer than its 105 minutes - but more promising omens are
to be found in his earlier A Little Princess, which diverged drastically
from the book on which it was based. Let’s hope he can persuade Kloves
to take a few more liberties with J K Rowling’s semi-sacred text than
he does here. “So sorry, dozed off,” confesses Lockhart at one point.
“What did I miss?” The answer: not much.
12th November, 2002
(seen 11th November , UCI MetroCentre, Gateshead)
For the original
preview of the film click here.
by Neil
Young
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