Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Kippers for breakfast, Aunt Helga? Is it St. Swithen’s Day already?

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Photo: Warner Bros.

Please read the following with shrill Cockney accent. In this week’s 161-minute, ass-numbing episode of Harry Potter, watch as our favorite Hogwart wizard goes through puberty and is forced to unlock the Chamber of Secrets! What will little Harry Potter do when the higgeldy-piggeldy is out of the bag and all his friends are turned to stone? With the help of Ron, Hermione, and Ginny Weasley’s diary, Harry will once again save the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry from the dark forces of Slytherin’s past. Did last week’s episode of Harry Potter leave you hungry for more spells and Quidditch matches? Hold on to your seats faithful Hogwartians! Harry’s latest adventure has enough snakes, mandrakes, phoenix tears, Cornish pixies, climaxes, denouements, and unexplained camera tilts to scare the J.R.R. Tolkien out of you. Make no mistake, though—this is a quintessential J.K. Rowling toy factory. Kippers for breakfast, Aunt Helga? Is it St. Swithen’s Day already? Not since Goblin Pubby viciously scared the Schnappsburgher Spitzligs have you seen an adventure this raucous. Not only will you get to see Harry and Ron breaking the speed limit aboard a flying car (watch out for that Whomping Willow!) but you’ll also get to see young Harry duke it out with the evil young Draco in a death-defying battle in the sky that will put crazy ol’ George Lucas to shame! Children: Do Not Try This At Home! Step aside Jar-Jar Binks, here comes little Dobby! And is that Gilderoy Lockhart I see? Well, that fey accent won’t do you any good where you’re going, you dirty, dirty teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts! How will Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall negotiate the racial free for all between the pure-bloods and the muggle-borns while trying to cover up Mr. Columbus’s gratuitous cutaways to black faces? More importantly, will Harry Potter grow the Quidditch balls to play Y Tu Jism Tambien inside the Hogwarts swimming pool with that Mexican man hiding behind those bushes? All this and more in this action-packed episode we like to call Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Same Hogwart time, same Hogwart channel. Back in St. Olaf during the annual cheese fair, Gertrude Ginkelhaughen, the town’s biggest pusher for imported cheese, used to say: “If you don’t want to miss a minute of this stuffy three-hour redundancy, bring a urine bucket!”

Score: 
 Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Kenneth Branagh, Alan Rickman, Warwick Davis, Robbie Coltrane, Sean Biggerstaff, Shirley Henderson, Miriam Margolyes, Alfred Burke, Sally Mortemore, David Bradley, Robert Hardy, Toby Jones, Christian Coulson, Tom Felton, Jason Isaacs  Director: Chris Columbus  Screenwriter: Steve Kloves  Distributor: Warner Bros.  Running Time: 161 min  Rating: PG  Year: 2002  Buy: Video, Soundtrack, Book

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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