Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/Harry Potter

Movie Guru Rating:
Enlightening (4 out of 5)

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One muggle's take on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

by Jack Neely

I envy kids today, and it's not just the better eyesight, the lower cancer risk, and the free food. My problem is that they've got better movies than the ones my friends and I ever got to see at the Tennessee in the '60s. Back then, older folks would talk about King Kong, Treasure Island, the great adventure movies of the deep past. But the ones I got to see were Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and any number of movies starring Dean Jones. I grew up thinking the word modern meant plain, dull, and simpleminded. I suspect the popcorn lobby was behind it; it was easy to leave your seat and get some more popcorn, because you never missed anything much.

I never expected anyone would ever make a movie like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

It should go without saying that it's not just for kids. Though I saw it on an early-evening showing on a weekend, more than half of the 150-odd people in my theater were beer legal. The movie deals with some major themes—loyalty, betrayal, crypto-racism—and a plot more complicated than any John Grisham thriller. In fact, it's not for some kids, who find this one a good deal scarier than the previous one. Not only are there creepy new characters to worry about, including the enigmatic Tom Riddle; another, larger member of the blondly evil Malfoy family; a glad-handing, not altogether trustworthy wizard-celebrity aptly played by Kenneth Branagh; and a rumored monster. Worst of all, in this movie, Harry begins to suspect that he has something wicked flowing in his own veins. No, it's not a kids' movie, which maybe explains why we've got several Shakespearean, Oscar-winning actors playing major roles. (The late Richard Harrise carries his final role well, but sounds a little hoarse.)

You know the story. If you didn't, you'd find Chamber of Secrets pretty vexing. Some who saw the first movie but haven't read the second book might be dismayed to find out that it opens with Harry living once again back in his stepparents' house in sprawly suburbia; the events of the previous year, the owls and the giant Hagrid apparently didn't impress his stepparents, who mainly mean to keep Harry away from Hogwarts School, and away from human society as well.

I'm determined to write this column without using the phrase special effects. It's not quite adequate to describe some of the casual genius of the movie. For me, these things, whatever you want to call them, are the movie's heart: A sensitive, flirtatious ghost who haunts the toilet stall where she died. Another ghost, Sir Nicholas, who tips his head—not his hat—to passing ladies. An ancient book that answers written questions like an AOL instant messenger. A near-sighted owl who has trouble with soft landings. A beat-up old sedan, that, while badly in need of a tune-up and a lube job and not altogether dependable, occasionally gets off the ground. And, as last time, the figures in the background portraits, some of whom keep still, as a portrait is supposed to, but others of whom comment on the action or get so frightened by a swarm of Cornish pixies that they step out of their frames.

Those elaborate but often understated touches of the Harry Potter series are too clever, and too subtle, to be compared with the special effects in a Mission Impossible movie.

One exception is Dobby, the house elf, who could be a run-of-the-mill cliche from the School of Cute Non-Human Sidekicks which gave us Jar-Jar Binks and R2D2, except for his self-lacerating guilt over his many missteps. But even Dobby has some surprises.

The movie has a high sense of style. I sat in the theater thinking that if Knoxville built some of the things they show at Hogwarts, especially the mouth-opening giant stone head toward the end, well, we'd have our elusive destination attraction.

Inevitably, it does have a few flaws, mostly of the specious not-as-good-as-the-book variety. People who've read the book are already complaining about what's been left out. On the other hand, people who haven't read the book might well complain about some seemingly incomprehensible scenes that were left in.

Also, those of us who haven't bought into the whole J.K. Rowling universe might suspect that she makes up new physical laws and magical phenomena just to solve plot problems. Absolutely anything might happen here, if she can make up a rule to explain it. At a couple of moments when our heroes seem in some dire and fatal predicament, here comes some unexpected and maybe undeserved salvation. Maybe it falls together better in the book.

Overall, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is worth seeing for the pure mental stimulation. I propose that we subject it to a test. Get some electrodes and some willing adult subjects, people as intelligent as you want them to be, require Ph.D.s if you want to, and show them a serious art film: Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, say, or anything from the French New Wave; and then show them Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I'm willing to bet that they'll be firing more synapses in the latter.