Magic kid II

Dobby the House Elf lets us know right away that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is not going to pussyfoot around the dark side of magic. “Terrible things are about to happen,” warns the tiny, self-flagellating, computer-generated cousin to Star Wars’ worrywart Jar Jar Binks. And indeed, they do. Messages written in blood appear on the walls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A quite-possibly-murdered cat (oh, my trembling wand, it’s poor Mrs. Norris!) is hung upside down in an academy corridor. A hushed, malevolent, mysterious voice urges the famed boy wizard of the title to “kill, kill.”

This second and ironically much fresher film based on J.K. Rowling’s monstrously popular book series continues to push the fright quotient of PG-rated fantasy (remember the roving, club-slinging troll and drooling three-headed guard dog of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone?). It nearly overwhelms its own inherent magical wonders and characters with an emphasis on action, but the movie also manages to work its way out from under the heavy hallowed aura that partially smothered the fun of its predecessor.

Chamber of Secrets generally has more energy than Sorcerer’s Stone had, and the child acting (especially by star Daniel Radcliffe) is more digestible. Unfortunately, the film also has more frames. It runs about 160 minutes. This gives return director Chris Columbus (Stepmom, Bicentennial Man) and screenwriter Steven Kloves (The Wonder Boys, Racing with the Moon) enough time to remain fastidiously faithful to their source. It also layers exhilarating, often comic vignettes such as a classroom melee with pesky blue pixies and another quidditch match (a soccer-like game involving flying broomsticks and balls) so thickly that they begin to produce a quasi-monotone, marathon effect. The movie dramatically sags in spots.

The story begins with the bespectacled, famously facially scarred, orphaned Harry completing a very unpleasant summer at the home of his repugnant uncle, aunt and cousin. He is a celebrity at Hogwarts now. He yearns to return to his beloved scholastic haunts but soon learns through Dobby that an evil force has taken over the school. Some students are scared stiff. Others are even more inconvenienced: they are “petrified” into human statues.

“The chamber of secrets has been opened,” reads some ominous hallway graffiti. “Enemies of the heir … beware.” The message refers to a chamber built by renegade Hogwarts co-founder Salazar Slytherin. In the chamber survive Slytherin’s dreams to cleanse the institution of all mudbloods (students tainted by their human lineage), and those dreams are guarded by a monster that only the heir of Slytherin can control. Both Harry and the bully Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton leading a peer group with underdeveloped Lost Boys potential) are suspected of being this unknown descendant as mystery and mayhem escalate.

Most of the cast and crew return for this entertaining adventure and box-office gravy train. The characters include the intelligent, rational Hermione Granger (Emma Watson); Harry’s loyal sidekick, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint); huge gamekeeper Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane); potions master Professor Snape (Alan Rickman); mentor Professor Dumbledore (the late Richard Harris); and Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith). New faces that considerably enhance the proceedings are the vain professor of defense against the dark arts, Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh gleefully drenched in narcissism); and the deliciously wicked, blond-locked Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs).

We revisit the marketplace of Diagon Alley and the Forbidden Forest, hop aboard a flying Ford and broomsticks, and cross paths with horrific spiders and very strange plant-creatures called mandrakes. The excellent special effects include moving photo album snapshots, a howler letter that forms itself into the shape of a mouth and yells at its recipient, an enchanted diary and a disgusting bout of regurgitation involving a reversed magic spell and slugs.

Chamber of Secrets is about loyalty, determination, resourcefulness and a maverick disregard for rules. We are told that our choices may be even more important than our talent, that history does repeat itself and that hearing voices isn’t good—even in the world of wizardry. In one key scene, the sharpness of mind proves to be just as valuable and effective as magic. It’s much to the Chamber of Secrets’ credit that it cinematically practices what it preaches.