Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, 2002

Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets, 2002
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint



Stage: Home TV selection
Harry in short:Forced to spend his summer holidays with his muggle relations, Harry Potter gets a real shock when he gets a surprise visitor: Dobby the house-elf, who warns Harry Potter against returning to Hogwarts, for terrible things are going to happen. Harry decides to ignore Dobby's warning and continues with his pre-arranged schedule. But at Hogwarts, strange and terrible things are indeed happening: Harry is suddenly hearing mysterious voices from inside the walls, muggle-born students are being attacked, and a message scrawled on the wall in blood puts everyone on his/her guard - "The Chamber Of Secrets Has Been Opened. Enemies Of The Heir, Beware"



Preps: Having read all of the books, I was anxious to see the movies as well. This was the second or the third time to see this. From a teen perspective, a superb transformation of the written material into movie reality.


Reality: As said, the tremendous success Potter had (or dare I say, Rowling had) with creating so many marketing materials - where the movie is the mere "must have" and all the rest just sings the same tune. Meaning, that from that point on, the teens in the globe went crazy about this magical mumbo jumbo, from having the school on net for magicians, to making their parents buy them everything that is connected with Harry Potter. In some sense, more or less similar to Avatar. Namely, Potter creates a versatile parallel world, where almost everything is possible, the good perceived as the virtue that in the end overcomes the evil. The villains in one dorm, the good guys in another. The power among teachers nicely balanced (also in good/evil sense). However, this goes for all Harry Potters with the movie versions of the brilliant scripts.

The story is always a bit different, nevertheless the movie itself holds a strong case in sense of continuity of different facts (following the true book, upon which it was built); separation between "real world" and magical interpretation. New faces each time, the main protagonists remaining the same. A step forward in juvenile genre, making dreaming virtually possible. After all, who wouldn't be a magician for at least a day? The items, produced in the imagination of Rowling, are amazingly put to life in the movie. From Dobby, to magic tools (the invisible coat, the potion, flying donuts, etc). It will hold the viewer up to the end, presumeably if the viewer is normally a fan of Potter. For all the others -the formula is 1:0 - either you love it or hate it, no passage inbetween.


My personal rate: 7,0 (not as good as some of the sequels and definitely doesn't break the initial part. However, a truly good piece in perspective of making your dreams turn real. And the kids are obviously happy about the fact, that geeks with glasses are again in the game).


Harry on IMDB