Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

There’s nothing better than movies that are guaranteed to earn over half a billion at the box office. Oh, no, wait, almost anything is better than those movies. From Star Wars—Episode 1: The Plotless Menace to Lord of the Rings: The Two and a Half Hours these films arrive with a full sense of being entitled to our money. Chamber of Secrets is no different. In spite of the fact that the last Harry Potter film was critically reviled, it was a huge financial success. Not wishing to mess with a crappy, but profitable, formula, director Chris Columbus rolls out an even less interesting sequel. Here, Harry Potter attends his second year at the venereally named Hogwarts Academy, where his pals Hermione and Ron Weasley have started acting embarrassed around each other. While Hermione and Ron exhibit the symptoms of early-onset adolescence, someone … or something … has opened the dreaded and titular Chamber of Secrets. Lurking deep inside is … yes … the horrors of boredom! Not much of interest happens in this episode, because it’s mostly a set-up for future events. It’s especially amazing that someone could take such rich source material (while not exactly Shakespeare, the Harry Potter books are at least a good read) and turn it into something so bland. On the plus side, the next installment is due to be directed by Y Tu Mama Tambien director Alfonso Cuarón (seriously), so, hell, I guess we’ll be lining up for that one too.