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Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (Widescreen Edition)Rating:
Release Date: 11 April, 2003 Retail Price: $19.98 OUR Price: $13.88 You SAVE: $6.10! Cast: Complete Cast (13 total) |
Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (Widescreen Edition) Reviews
The series advances
Chamber of Secrets is of course the adaptation of the second book in the successful Harry Potter series, and finds the gang at Hogwarts racing to uncover a great evil that has been released upon the students again. In terms of translating the book to film, 'Chamber' is much more successful than the original, if only because the story is more focused and there is a stronger, hands-on climax that gives Harry something to do. In comparison to the third and fourth films, Chamber of Secrets was also the last movie where major chunks of the original story were not cut out or re-written. There are bits missing, but they aren't as obvious. It also started the trend of the series taking on a darker tone, so parents might want to watch this one with younger kids.
Warner Bros did a decent job with the dvd edition. The film presentation is solid. The extras are a mix of kids games and useful production information. Not a huge ton of stuff, but worth checking out. In all, Chamber of Secrets is a successful continuation of the movie franchise. The stakes are greater than the first, and none of the magic world of Harry Potter has been lost. Recommended.
A Chamber of DVD Secrets
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", the second Harry Potter film in the series, was the first bit of the Harry Potter phenomenon I was every exposed to. I'd kind of avoided the boy wizard before then, but after seeing it those couple of years ago, even though I didn't entirely follow what was what and who was who, I realized it was pretty entertaining. After reading the second book recently, I picked up the DVD and watched it again. The series gets a little darker, like the books do, but unlike the book, I don't think the jump is as large, which I reckon is a good thing. Though I prefer the first film, it's still good to watch.
It's Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe's) second year at Hogwart's wizards school, and after a shaky summer, he returns to find himself in the midst of a sinister plot. It seems a certain Heir of Slytherin has opened the legendary Chamber of Secrets, loosing a monster that is wandering about petrifing students, literally! Many fingers point to Harry, Harry's finger points to Malfoy, and Ron's wand... well that doesn't point at all, as its broken and backfiring. What's this all got to do with the mysterious trails spiders, haunted toilets, a rogue Quidditch bludger and a self-flagellating house elf? Can Harry, Ron and Hermione figure things out?
All the kids are a little bit older and a little bit wiser in this film, plus the boys' voices are breaking. In some scenes they're kind of croaky sounding, in other scenes they have their child voice, and in others their voices broken through, not neccesarily in that order. There's a couple of new kids, (like Colin Creevey) and they are just as well cast as the others. The new adults are well cast too. Though not my favorite performance of his career, Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh makes an interesting Gilderoy Lockhart, the vain second year dark arts teacher. He played it a lot more subtley than I expected him to. Ex-Fast Show comedian Mark Williams plays Mr Weasley, which I reckon was a great choice. I missed some of the cast from the last film though. You hardly see Warwick Davis (who plays Professor Flitwick), let alone hear him say anything, and John Cleese's Nearly Headless Nick, who has a rather significant deathday party in the book, has hardly anything to do here except get petrified.
There were other things cut out too, like the catching of the garden gnomes at the Weasley's. The fans of the book will feel the absence more than the casual viewers though. Personally, I like to think of the Harry Potter films as illustrations to the books put into motion, rather like the pictures in the world of Hogwarts. They give an idea of what the book would look like, an impression.
Special features include an interview with author J.K. Rowling and script writer Steve Kloves, as well as interviews with all the kids and all the main adult actors. There's also slick virtual tours through Diagon Alley, Dumbledore's Office and Gilderoy Lockhart's Classroom (a tour that turns out to be just as pretentious as he is, complete with gushing praises from the narrator). There's also a couple of games: you can visit the Chamber of Secrets after answering some Harry Potter trivia, you can drive the flying car through the forbidden forest (which I found frustrating but addictive). There's also a trivia game about what spell does what too. Unlike the first DVD, you don't have to beat any games to access the deleted scenes, you're able to go to them straight from the main menu. Just as well, there's 19 of them, and some of them are pretty significant. Notable scenes include Harry's close encounter with the Malfoys in the dark magic shop, Harry discovering that Filch is taking wizard lessons by correspondence. I wish they'd left some of these scenes in, particularly the ones where Harry Potter questions his nature, is he a good wizard or a bad wizard. That was some mighty fine character development cut there! There's also a gallery of design drawings and a section called "Colin Creevey's Darkroom" where you can select pictures of various characters, then play them in a slideshow of sorts.
Apparently there's a whole stack of stuff in the DVD ROM features, but I just couldn't get them to work on my laptop's DVD drive. Using InterActual player (the player that many Warner Brothers films have you install to play their DVDs), it says there is a script error, and when I tried Windows Media Player 9 and Cyberlink PowerDVD 4.0, though it ran the DVD and everything else with it fine, the DVD acted as if it wasn't in a DVD ROM drive, telling me that if I put the DVD into my PC's drive I'd get all these wonderful features. It was in my DVD drive! Aggh! It IS in a DVD drive. Maybe its just my type of laptop (BenQ DH5100U, 1.5 Gigahertz). Ah well, it looked like it would have been really fun, especially for fans of the series.
All in all, its definitely worth a look for Harry Potter fans, but I would recommend you read the book first.
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