Harry Potter: faltering magic

What do you get when you add a suspenseful story, cutting-edge computer animation, perfect production design, and about a zillion Academy Award nominated/winning actors? Unfortunately for the over-anticipated Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the answer is a disappointingly dull and disjointed film.

The main problem with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets isn't that it's bad (don't be fooled, though, this is a problem), it's that it has the potential to be so much better. The plotline itself is a gripping mystery, the actors are of the finest caliber, and the book and its prequel and sequels are some of the greatest pieces of modern literature. All the material needed to make a great movie is right there. But the writers strangled the script, the composer mangled the music, and the director buried the actors under so much posturing and hair that the movie lost the magic of the book.

For those people who have been under a rock for the last few years, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets marks young wizard Harry Potter's (Daniel Radcliffe) return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his second year of magic, Quidditch and bold battle against the forces of evil. All is going splendidly until an anonymous evildoer opens the hidden Chamber of Secrets and unleashes the monster within. Supposedly when the school was created, one of the founders, Salazar Slytherin, thought that "mudbloods," wizards with Muggle (non-magic) parents, should be excluded. When he was overruled, he left the school, but left behind the Chamber to be opened by his heir and "purge" the school of Muggle-borns. One by one the mystery monster begins "petrifying" students with Muggle parents, and it's up to Harry to find the beast before Hogwarts is closed forever.

The plot has definite possibilities: it's intelligent, mysterious, and downright creepy. However, director Chris Columbus completely fails to create tension in the atmosphere. He's completely wrong for this movie; Home Alone was about as suspenseful as the Home Shopping Channel. In the book, each attack ups the stakes and makes the school a little more afraid, a little more wary. The way the movie runs, the attacks have virtually no effect on the student body whatsoever. The kids might at least look a teensy bit distressed that several of their number are now lying completely immobile in the hospital wing, but nope, they carry on as usual. Important plot lines, like the fact that much of the school thinks Harry is the culprit, are completely ignored or merely glanced at, so any member of the audience who has not read the book (and they should be deeply ashamed) misses out on crucial information.

The script lacks the material that makes the books a joyous read. Outside of a few one-liners, the film is without humor. Kenneth Branagh, who plays the pompous Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Gilderoy Lockhart and is one of the finest comic and dramatic actors of the times, barely puts in an appearance. His scenes are short and ultimately bogged down in melodrama. Moaning Myrtle (Shirley Henderson), the ghost that haunts the girls' bathroom, could be hysterical. Instead, she's like the Demon Child from Planet Hell, a bizarre combination of a fifties female stereotype, an annoying little sister, and a satanic munchkin. Moments that give the book charm and wit, like the Valentine's Day debacle, are completely cut. The result is a barebones movie, with a singular plotline deprived of the subplots and subtle nuances of J.K. Rowling's writing that give it dimension and substance. And then there's the score.

The score is intrusive and obnoxious. It's melodramatic, overblown and uncreative. It's basically the Star Wars score, only bad. Whenever the Hogwarts castle comes into sight, composer John Williams (who also composed Star Wars, and it shows) cues the big, epic, imposing, Fortress of Doom music. Hogwarts is supposed to be an inviting and enchanting palace, not the Death Star. From the music you expect TIE Fighters to come zooming out of the lake. At the end, when the writers just took the can of cheese spray and applied it directly to the film, the music is so uplifting it's positively nauseating. The score gets in the way of the actors, making some decent scenes almost unwatchable.

The acting in Chamber of Secrets is unremarkable and stagnant. Both Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who play Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, Harry's best friends and in the movie, his token sidekicks, do a fine job with their limited roles, but Radcliffe is flat and unvaried. He puts on his "determined and heroic" face at the very beginning and doesn't take it off the rest of the film. What you can see of Richard Harris (Headmaster Albus Dumbledore) through the mounds of hair that suffocate him is weak and uninspiring. Harris's portrayal is what would happen to the Dumbledore of the book if he took a few sedatives after recovering from a life-threatening illness: frail and tired. Like Branagh, the other adults, including the excellent Maggie Smith (the stern Professor Minerva McGonagall), Alan Rickman (the slimy Professor Severus Snape) and Robbie Coltrane (the simply humongous Hagrid), are relegated to the amount of screen time usually given to characters with names like Store Clerk and Expendable Spectator #3. There's simply no point in employing such talent if it goes unused.

The production design in this movie is its saving grace. The sets and lighting are beautiful and evocative. Dumbledore's office is wonderfully cluttered, with inventive devices, piles of papers, and enormous books piled in every crook and cranny. The Chamber itself is spooky and dank, creating heightened tension in the movie for the first time. The computer animation blends seamlessly with the live-action, and the Quiddith sequence especially is thrilling to watch and enjoy. By itself, the visual design is first-rate, Oscar-winning quality, and manages to stand above the mediocrity of the rest of the movie.

So, if you're in the market for a creative, clever, suspenseful story with memorable characters and insightful plotlines, go read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and skip this flick.