Harry Potter is back on my list with his third entry onto my list with the second movie from the series. This was a little more polished compared to the original movie but was still in a very similar theme and very pleasant for the most part. Released in 2002 and just a year after the original movie. This was planned before the original making it a smooth transition and then the people behind the camera realised that these movies were going to be good so decisions were made over the productions to make them more efficient. This film saw returning stars of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint & Emma Watson in the main three roles with
Kenneth Branagh, Jason Isaacs and Gemma Jones joining the existing cast which included Richard Harris, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Warwick Davis, John Cleese, Richard Griffiths & Fiona Shaw. Surprisingly the Budget for the sequel had shrunk by $25m to a round $100m which was fine as it returned $880.3m from the box-office which pretty much secured the rest of the series by then. Harry Potter became the phenomenon that swept the worlds firstly with children’s story books that the adult realised was good so they got involved and then the movies followed, did it make a clean sweep with the Tri-Critic Sync Challenge? Well no it didn’t with IMDb giving this one a rather weak 7.4 out of 10 but Rotten Tomatoes liked it similar to myself with a 83%. Moving onto the plot which with all Harry Potter movies will be difficult without breaking the spoilers rules.
Harry begins at his usual horrible home with the Dursley’s before a ‘House-Elf’ arrives to help him and warn him that someone wants him dead and should not return to Hogwarts. The house-elf is Dobby who just mentioning his name makes people go owww try it in public they will even do it with strangers. Ohhh dobby’s so cute and blah blah blah. Sorry I digress. In an attempt to save Harry Doddy deliberately sabotages various things including the Dursley’s dinner party which Harry gets the blame for. Ron arrives in a flying car and takes Harry to his house where he stays until they miss the Hogwarts express and steal the family flying car to make their own way to Hogwarts. Risking revealing the whole wizarding world to rest of the world in the progress. Meaning punishment at the school. Within the detention Harry starts to hear strange voices and then finds Argus Filch’s cat petrified next to message warning that the Chamber Of The Secrets has been opened. Others become petrified (meaning they are frozen in exact position at the second it happened) while Harry keeps hearing voices whispering to him. Harry finds a diary of Tom Riddle who 50 years ago accused Hagrid of opening the chamber in his diary. When Hermione is petrified Harry and Ron question Hagrid just as he is arrested by Dumbledore, Minister of Magic and Lucius who ship him off to Azkaban but not before he tells the boys to follow the spiders. The spiders clue leads them to another clue to the beast which has been released from the Chamber. A Bas… whoa there I nearly revealed too much there so I will stop and sum up like usual.
As mentioned before when you a have a story that arcs across eight movies each with individual story within but having to nudge the main story along. They are superbly written kids love them and they bring the story along at a great pace to keep the reader involved and waiting for the next page. But I am not here to review the books but the movies. This is third on my list of the eight movies in the order so far we started with Order of the Phoenix then Prisoner of Azkaban before this one and I like this more than them. This was a good movie (as all HP are) but this followed the original movie but graphically was much more smooth cgi and less cartoonesk images used to digitise certain aspects of the movie. The villain of the story was much more of a beast rather than a head in the back of a head oops spoilers. This is a massive beast stalking the halls of Hogwarts which is truly scary as oppose to the evil villain hiding in the shadows. Before you pick me up on this the monster here is hiding in the shadows and that is part of the spooking the kids by them being accosted in the shadows without anyone seeing it or even working out what it could be. This is clearly a kids movie with a very tinged edge of darkness which is truly scary for young ones and started to sew the seeds of ‘he who should not be named’ but this is a lot more subtle than those that followed and is a good bridge from the light side towards the darker movies that follow. I recommend this and all of the HP movies and in order as well – as in the order of the films not in the order of my rankings.
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