Harry has spent his summer in a living hell. Even though the Dursley's "generously" gave Harry his cousin Dudley's second bedroom, he's still treated like garbage. One night, Harry is visited by a wizard's house-elf, Dobby, and he is warned not to return to Hogwart's. Harry ignores Dobby and still returns to Hogwart's, rescued from his virtual prison by the Weasleys. As the year goes on at Hogwart's, strange things begin to happen: people are petrified (literally), Harry repeatedly hears a threatening voice, and someone keeps writing in blood on the walls about "The Chamber of Secrets". Harry and the gang find out exactly what the Chamber is, and Harry also discovers during a wizard's duel with Draco Malfoy that he can speak "Parseltongue" (snake-talk). This leads everyone to believe that Harry is the heir of Salazar Slytherin, who it just so happens is the only person who can open the Chamber of Secrets. Of course, Harry, Ron, and Hermione set out to solve the mystery that is threatening to close-down Hogwart's.
I can honestly say that if I had never seen The Godfather Part II or Aliens before November 15th, The Chamber of Secrets would be, in my book, the greatest sequel of all-time. I was absolutely enthralled and mesmerized by this film. It's THAT good. Kenneth Branagh was absolutely PERFECT PERFECT PERFECT as Gilderoy, and Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy was absolutely diabolic, and the exact image of the novelic version. This is also a very close adaptation of the novel, although the first film was more so. Once again, the only major problem with Potter is the length, which is again around 2 hours and 40 minutes. I only find this a problem due to the underage audience of the film, but going by the box office numbers ($88.4 million the first weekend of release) it doesn't really matter much.
Oh man, I can't wait to go watch this again... |
