Friday, May 9, 2003 | 8:41 a.m.
Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at [email protected].
The best part of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," now available on a two-disc DVD set packed with extras (Warner Home Video, $29.95), is knowing that it's the last time Chris Columbus is going to handle the "Potter" films for a while.
The next film in the series, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," will be directed by Alfonso Cuaron ("Y Tu Mama Tambien"), which might be a good thing or might not -- but either way, at least it won't be "Mrs. Doubtfire" with wands and pointy hats.
Columbus did a fine, workmanlike job with "Chamber" and its prequel, but when you're adapting beloved stories that have been read by everyone and their brother, competence doesn't necessarily make a memorable film. The director who turned J.K. Rowling's fantasy world into reality needed to introduce a wild-card element, either in the acting or in the story.
The "Potter" films are in bad need of surprises, and Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves are obviously too intimidated by Rowling to provide them.
If you haven't read the books, the 2 1/2-hour running time of "Chamber" may seem excessive, and I can't help but wonder if Columbus and Kloves are guilty of running long not to please the fans, but to please the marketing department.
Long, visual-effects-heavy sequences, such as the Quidditch matches in both films, mean little without strong character development, and by sacrificing sequences from the book -- Nearly Headless Nick's Halloween party, for example -- "Chamber" denies the actors the luxury of stretching out.
Meanwhile the visuals play out too long, congratulating themselves. Daniel Radcliffe still has a long way to go to become Harry; aside from his shaggy Beatle moptop and zigzag scar, he has little presence. And poor Hermione, capably played by Emma Watson, exists only to spout exposition -- which Kloves readily admits in an interview on Disc Two.
Scarily, Rowling agrees.
"You can just assume she read it in a book somewhere," she blandly avers. That's a heck of a thing to say about the one character in the "Potter" books, aside from Harry himself, who has suffered the most.
Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) has his family and Harry; Harry has nearly everyone but Voldemort himself helping him along at one point or another. Hermione has only her books and her friends -- who ridicule her from time to time -- to help her save everyone's bacon.
You wouldn't know this from the films, in which Hermione's a snotty know-it-all. Ron is somewhat witty but mostly makes faces, and Harry is a deus ex machina. That's not the way it is in the books, and if you haven't read them, you shouldn't waste another moment reading this.
In happier news, this two-disc set is superior to the first "Potter" DVD in nearly every way. The extras are readily accessible -- you don't have to play a series of annoying games to get to them -- and the interviews, while fawning ("Columbus is great, the sets are amazing, the mood on set is wonderful"), are fun to watch.
And Kenneth Branagh, as preening wizard Gilderoy Lockhart, steals the picture. Watching him face off with Snape (Alan Rickman) in a wizard's duel is one of "Chamber's" few surprises; think of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in "The Great Race," and how you wanted both men -- good, evil, doesn't matter -- to succeed, so they can keep on battling.
"If you've been to the moon, he's been there twice," Branagh says of his character. The "Harry Potter" movies have yet to make orbit, but "Chamber of Secrets" dutifully sets up another rocket on the pad. This time, for sure.
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