254. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets; movie review

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
Cert 12A
154 mins
BBFC advice: Contains mild fantasy violence and scary moments

"Look at the size of those spiders! I thought this was meant to be for kids!"
I paraphrase Mrs W, a grade one arachnophobe, who would have surely suffered a heart attack if she had "followed the spiders" in the quest to discover The Chamber Of Secrets.
Needless to say, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) was not keen but mustered up the courage to join Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) in a jaunt to the out-of-bounds forest outside Hogwart's School.
He certainly wished he hadn't when greeted by the scene which must have surely prompted many a nightmare among young children.
Thankfully, Chris Columbus's final Potter outing does have lighter moments too - for example, the flight of Harry and Ron in a sky blue Ford Anglia across London as they try to catch up with the Hogwart's Express.
Oh, and the introduction of Dobby - the character who has an uncanny resemblance to Gollum in Lord Of The Rings.
It really isn't worth me delving much into the plot because it is one of the most-watched movies of the past 20 years - suffice to say that trouble is afoot because a centuries-old chamber has been opened beneath Hogwart's and requires Harry, Ron and Hermione (Emma Watson) to be even more daring than before.
Oh, and I nearly forgot Kenneth Branagh as the new professor who is keener on being a celebrity than conjuring magic and defeating practitioners of dark arts.
And, this is also where Malfoy (Tom Felton) becomes Harry's quidditch rival.
It all adds up to another cracking bit of movie story-telling.
But, because I am a tough task-master, it loses half a mark because it is a bit too similar to the Philosopher's Stone and doesn't push the story on as much as Prisoner Of Azkaban does.

Reasons to watch: It's Harry Potter, innit?
Reasons to avoid: A shade too similar to the first film

Laughs: Three
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 9/10

Did you know? Fourteen Ford Anglias were destroyed during the Whomping Willow scene.

The final word. J.K. Rowling: " I was most worried about the spiders. Because you see these old sci-fi movies where they have spiders and they're always hysterically funny, they're never, never scary. And it's easy to write a scene like that in a novel, and make it scary. But when I started thinking about how we were going to actually see that, in fact it was extremely frightening. They were the most frightening large spiders I've ever seen in my life." 

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