Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) - Movie Review

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the second installment of J.K. Rawlings phenomenally great series that has been adapted into a movie. The series is so great in my opinion that I will go ahead and post right now that all of them get a score of 10 stars out of 10. Don't worry, I'll remind you of the scores for each of the next 6 movies.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets builds on the first movie. After all, the movies are supposed to follow Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) as they attend school at Hogwarts. In this movie we meet Guilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh), the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. Lockhart is full of himself and is an inept wizard; it's amazing he has made it as far as he has in life and being so inept.

As I did for Sorcerer's Stone in giving my favorite scene I won't describe the big scenes, though they are some of my favorites. However, I have other scenes that I like that will be listed below.

The first scene I liked was when Ron and his twin brothers, Fred (James Phelps) and George (Oliver Phelps), come to Surrey, England to rescue Harry. Harry has been put on lock down in the Dursley house because of something he didn't do. Dobby (Toby Jones) the House Elf has taken it upon himself to save Harry Potter from a plot against him. Dobby drops a cake on Uncle Vernon's boss's wife's head. When Ron, Fred and George come to rescue Harry they do so in a flying car. When they get to the Weasley home we meet Arthur Weasley (Mark Williams) and Molly Weasley (Julie Walters), parents to Ron, Fred and George. We also meet Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright).

The second scene I like was the dueling scene between Harry and Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton). They are supposed to only disarm each other, but Malfoy cheats (shocker!). Harry retaliates, but Malfoy comes back with a spell that produces a snake. Harry talks to the snake trying to convince it to not attack another student, this shocks everyone because talking to snakes is not a common gift.

The next scene is one of the funniest scenes. It's when Harry and Ron "accompany" Lockhart into the Chamber of Secrets to save Ginny. They see a snake skin on the ground and Lockhart faints. However, this is a ploy in order to steal Ron's wand. Lockhart attempts to erase Harry's memories, but Ron's wand was broken near the beginning of the movie and he never replaced it. The spell Lockhart tries to use backfires and causes a cave-in, it also causes Lockhart to lose all of his memories.

I already scored this movie, how would you score it?