Harry Potter Review: Chamber of Secrets

There are 25 days left until the release of the final HP movie, Deathly Hallows part 2, so it's time for my second Harry Potter review. As I mentioned in earlier posts, The first part is a very general brief overview without spoilers and then I go into more details and a world-building rating, with spoilers. Leave a comment and let me know what you think! 

Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets

Brief:

In this second volume of the Harry Potter series Rowling expands our view of the Wizarding world, showing us more magic, more mystery, and more grey areas. Harry has gone most of the summer without hearing from his newfound friends at Hogwarts, wondering why they have abandoned him in this way. He soon finds out that his mail is being intercepted by a creature that doesn't want him to go back to school at all – for Harry Potter's own good, of course!

In the ensuing chaos and humour we see that the Wizarding world is not as pleasant as we may have considered it at first, not for everyone. Even without Voldemort, the Wizarding world isn't perfect and carefree; there are other mischief makers at work and all evidence suggests that a monster has been unleashed in Hogwarts School. And, as Harry begins to discover more and more about himself and his own powers, he also begins to doubt and question himself.

With this book the series begins to get darker and a little less linear. It is still a children's book, but it begins to unveil and explore some questions about the social structure of the Wizarding World, prejudice, and the importance of the choices we make. I would consider it more character-based, more reflective, than the first book, but there is still time for new spells and magical objects and humorous moments.

As with the Philosopher's Stone, I found the movie adaptation of this book very faithful. Again, I would recommend just watching the movie and skipping ahead to the third book.  

Movie Regrets: (SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT)

The overall storyline of this book was portrayed very well in the movie and very little changes or omissions were made. There are a couple of movie regrets that I wanted to comment on:

I'm not sure why I keep feeling like the special effects were a little less believable in this one. Or maybe it was just that the things they needed to portray were more difficult than those in the first book. Whatever it is, after watching the movie about a dozen times I started to get annoyed by the car scene, especially the part where Harry is dangling from it and Ron tries to help him up and his hand is sweaty… that scene really didn't work for me and there was something about the car or the background that just didn't fit.

The second special effects feature that annoyed me was the Basilisk. Again, I've watched this way too many times for my own good, which is probably why I'm noticing these things, but the part where Harry is fighting it with the sword didn't really work for me. I can't watch it now and make myself believe that it's an actual snake.

Maybe the whole special effects thing is really just because after seeing the first movie I, as a viewer/fan of the book, had an expectation that they should step up the level of awesomeness/magic portrayed and that didn't happen…?

Also, the Fawkes flying sequence should not have existed. It looked fake and Lockhart talking during the scene made it worse.

This is the point when I began to be less impressed with Daniel Radcliffe's acting. It wasn't too bad, but especially during the final Chamber scene when he thinks he's dying I didn't feel any emotions coming from him!

I don't like how Neville is developing into a comic relief tool. He's good at Herbology, why did they make him faint?!

Movie good points:

Dobby was excellently portrayed.

Also, the diary Riddle was great; a combination of good acting and not too bad special effects makes the final confrontation with him and the part when he is destroyed seem much more believable than the rest of the scenes within the Chamber.

No Lockhart Valentines! I found that sequence irksome in the books so I'm glad we didn't see it in the movie.

World-Building Rating:

I would have to rate this one a little lower on the world-building scale. It would fall at around Great. We do see much more of the world than before, but the story here was really more character driven and less of a world-building feat. Plus, something in me was saying: "Voldemort, agaaaaain!" even though I did appreciate the back-story and the diary bit.

It would have been very cool to see some of Ginny's perspective either during or after the events of this book, but the books remain very firmly within Harry's perspective. Hmmmm, there must be fanfiction of that somewhere.