About this time last year, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” came to town riding a wave of good publicity: Kids loved the picture as passionately as they had the J.K. Rowling novel upon which it was based, and a number of critics declared the movie a classic in the tradition of “The Wizard of Oz.”
I must confess, however, I could only take about forty-five minutes of the picture before walking out of the theater.
Usually I save such contemptuous gestures for films that are grotesque, pointless or both – the worst from the Farelly brothers, for instance. But because the “Potter” pedigree is so wonderful, because Rowling’s novels have almost single-handedly revived youth literacy and because I have always had a fondness for macabre little fables, I felt guilty about my rash disappearance.
How could I have been so out of step? Was it fluke? A bad day? Had I finally crossed the threshold into Old Farthood, never to return?
Having recently watched the original picture all the way through on DVD and screened its new follow-up, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” in the past week, I am starting to believe the answer to the latter question is “yes.”
The whole gang is back in this one – not only the wizard prodigy himself (Daniel Radcliffe), but chums Ron Weasley (Rupert Grant) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), his bratty nemesis Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), the enigmatic Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) and the lovely, aged administrators McGonagall and Dumbledore (Maggie Smith and the late Richard Harris).
And, of course, there’s Hogwarts itself – the grand, gothic school for the supernaturally gifted on whose grounds these characters teach, learn and make all manner of mischief.
This time out, Harry must sniff out the connection between a series of cryptic messages scrawled in blood across the school walls and the alarming number of students who’ve been “petrified,” or turned into living statues. (The answer seems to have something to do with a secret chamber – astonishing, I know – deep in the bowels of Hogwarts castle, the horrors of which have gone unseen for the past 50 years.)
Like the earlier film, “Chamber” seems like it has all the ingredients: a huge budget, a formidable cast and imagination to burn. There’s no doubt a lot of work went into the look, feel, color, shape and sound of the film. And Kenneth Branagh, a new addition whose buffoonish performance as a counterfeit Dark Arts expert is an amazing bit of self-parody, is diverting.
But on the whole, the characters and situations aren’t really interesting as filmed. The jokes are wacky instead of wry. The big action set pieces – including an all-out attack by thousands of giganantic, forest-dwelling arachnids – are frenzied rather than exciting. And the performances, alas, are wide-eyed rather than real.
Though both of the “Potter” films are set in England, cast with British actors and conceived by a British author, each was directed by an American, Chris Columbus, whose resume (“Home Alone,” “Mrs. Doubtfire”) suggests he was chosen to helm these first two films because of his commercial track record rather than his storytelling prowess.
Maybe a British director would have been better able to recreate the prickly, slightly twisted tone that has earned Rowling’s work comparisons with that of Roald Dahl. Perhaps Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, coming off the success of the prankish, brilliant “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” will bring a new sensibility to the series when he takes over as director on the third film.
Then again, maybe I’ll just avoid the “Potter” series altogether from here on out, as everyone else pities my misfortune for having been left out of the prevailing cultural zeitgeist. If it means I never have to hear the words “Muggle” or “Quiddich” again, it’ll be fine by me.
Jordan Gentile is a senior in journalism. You can touch his zeitgeist at [email protected].
