. . . What fans of the "Harry Potter" books love is the encounter with a work of inspiration, one that produces its own kind of magic. The movie, by comparison, is a careful facsimile, painstaking and technologically marvelous, but far too dutiful to create the kind of wonderment that attends each new Rowling story.
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER
OF SECRETS (2002) B:
. . . We're back at Hogwarts school, full of students in the throes of puberty, and the plot has something to do with a giant snake that lives in a "chamber of secrets." Paging Dr. Freud!
Fear not, though - Brittany Murphy does not show up to put the moves on Harry, and "Chamber" is safely PG. It's also, I'm happy to report, a lot more nimble than the first movie, which was often bogged down by lumpen, introductory material. The sequel jumps right into the story and barely stops to breathe for the next 2 hours and 40 minutes.
They say this one is "darker" than the first, and that's marginally true, but it's also lighter in spots, and funnier. The darkness comes from a monster that's loose in the school, the comic relief comes from Kenneth Branagh in the role of a self-promoting blowhard who joins the Hogwarts faculty, and Dobby, a digitally created elf whose efforts to help Harry do more harm than good.
. . . As for the young actors, well, they're still not exceptional. If (Daniel) Radcliffe were to stare into the eyes of the basilisk and become petrified, he'd be delivering his usual performance.
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER
OF AZKABAN (2004) B
One of the nice things about the Harry Potter movie series is that while the books keep getting longer, the movies do not.
"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" clocks in at a (relatively) tight 2 hours and 20 minutes, even though J.K. Rowling's "Azkaban" tome is big enough to sink a canoe.
