I finally saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets over the weekend and being a HUGE Harry Potter fan I have to give my review. All in all it was an enjoyable film but I thought that it had a few problems with the script. There were some story changes, that's to be expected but I was a little dissappointed that the movie focused almost entirely on Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Yes they are the main characters but the supporting characters that make up a large part of the books bring so much humor and contribute a great deal to the feel of Hogwarts, I really missed them in the movie. I also thought that Professor McGonagall was toned down too much, she didn't come off as the stern, no-nonsense character that she is, no fault to Maggie Smith who is great in everything she does. Professor Lockhart was also toned down, Kenneth Branagh-who was perfect for the role- should have been given a free'er hand. Even Snape didn't seem terribly vicious, it looked more like he had indigestion. I loved the flying car and the spiders(which made me itch) but Dobby The House Elf was not life like at all and his nearly expressionless high pitched voice annoyed me. The Quidditch match was good but too short and too much of the Malfoy/Potter race. I give this movie 3 out of 5 snitches. Now when are we going to have book 5, darn it!!!! Can you tell I take Harry Potter very seriously?

Renee

ps. Lucius Malfoy is absolutely perfect. You can't get better casting than that.

[ November 26, 2002, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: Renee ]

I don't know a darn thing about Harry Potter except that he's wildly popular.

Thanks for the review! Sounds like you know your Potterotomy! (I just made that word up. )

Kell

I know a couple of things, yeah hes popular and the writer of Harry potter got writers block after the first one or two books. I also know there are parents out there who are concerned about the content. My attitude, well regardless of what the content of the movie is (that I haven't seen), no matter what you try to keep your kids out of (magic etc), they'll find out soon enough if they want to.

Yup Kell, I'm a huge fan.
Lefora your right. Certain Fundamentalist Christian groups are all in a tizzy over Harry Potter. Why? Because it has magic and of course that means the books are evil. I do not understand their attitude at all. Where is the fun in life if we don't have a little fantasy in it? I mean we do want kids to read, right? Truthfully the Harry Potter books are classic good vs. evil stories. Very much like Superman and Starwars. If these "H.P. is evil" groups truly believe that their children cannot distinguish between a story and reality then they are in serious trouble. At a time when children rott their brains playing video games and watching tv constantly people should encourage kids to read. How else will their imaginations grow? The Harry Potter books has been responible for thousands of kids reading when they ordinarily wouldn't and that's just a start, by reading these books they will learn how much fun it is to read and be willing to try others. Imagination is muscle, it needs exercise. This is a serious soapbox item for me, I see kids today and you can't even understand them because they don't know how to speak properly, they graduate from highschool and they truly cannot read, and the ones that can read remain ignorant and dull because they think reading means boring text books. Ok, I'll get off my soap box now.

For those of you that haven't read any of these books I highly recommend them. When I read the first one it was only because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, I was bored and I figured 'Why not?'. Normally I do not care for fantasy or Sci-Fi books but I gave it a go and was I ever surprised, I loved it. These books aren't just for kids. I finished the first one in one night and headed back to the book store the next day for the rest.

I just finished reading my first Harry Potter book. You are so right, the books are awesome. I got hooked through the movies. Stay on your soapbox, these are great stories. So far there hasn't been any incest, parents being told to sacrifice their children, brother killing brother, and major war in the Harry Potter book. Much less violent than the Bible I'd say. Not that it isn't a good read too!

Child sacrifice...now there's something to talk about! No, I haven't heard of anything like this occurring as a direct result of reading Harry Potter books.
As with all fantasy books, they are simply that..fantasy. Ther's something wrong with a child's mind if they can read the material and not distinguish between reality and fiction.
I'm not on a soap box, I'm just looking at 'common sense' ...that's not so common.

I am a big fan of the Harry Potter series myself.

I was calling the movie a highlight reel of the book.

Renee i agre with you on the points you made of the movie.

Few other things that kinda get to me is like harry doesnt have green eyes in the movie and Ron just doesnt seem like such a whimp in the book like he does in the movie.

some parts in hte movie I would have liked to see that were cut out like instead of having Mcgonagall tell them of the champer when hermione asked think it would have been neater to do it the way it was in the book with the ghost teacher being asked.

I noticed in the commersals for the movie they showed scenes of the death day party but they seemed to have cut this out of the movie.

But all in all a not that bad of a movie.

I just had to share this. Yesterday we went to see Harry Potter - The Chamber of Secrets for the second time. The first time we went (in November) the sound quit minutes into the movie, and we lost about a minute or two of dialogue. So, we were given passes to come back, which was what we used yesterday to see it again. Well, as luck would have it, the picture went out in the movie half way through it. A fuse went in half of the theatres. So, we lost a minute or two of the movie So guess what? We have passes for a free movie again! The next itme we will go to see The Two Towers again and hope something goes wrong while it is showing!!! Pay once - repeated movie viewings - what a deal!!! Not such a good thing for the theatre's profits though.

When I helped my brother move in July, he and his family was reading the third book. They had the second book on tape so I listened to it on the trip we did to move the vehicles.
I was hooked. It's a great and imaginative series.
The first book is not too long or complicated. The second gets more so. The third even longer and more complicated and the fourth was even better. I think its a great way to get kids reading and enjoying reading. Start them on a small book. Then each suceeding book gets them to read bigger and more complicated stories. I think it's excellent.

The movies were good. I too, Renee, thought they missed out on too much of the actual story. The movie would have been so much better if they had played out all the characters better.
I think for political reasons they left out certain parts of the book. Like conning Prof. Lockhart to sign the permission slip to get the book with the transformation spell. In the movie Hermionne just pulls it off the shelf. They were probably afraid that it would offend people that they were showing in the movie children being manipulative of others.

I can't wait until the fifth book comes out too. I feel a bit silly reading books angled to children but life is too short to worry about being seen as silly.

As for the fundamentalist, POO-POO on them. Any intelligent thinking mature adult should know better. All kids have and need a rich fantasy life. It's necessary for healthy mental muturation.