Harry Potter 2

Last week, I kicked off a series of posts where I talk about my highly successful series of books and movies: Harry Potter.

That’s right, I did say “my”. You see, the whole thing was my idea. I had it all planned out and at least half of it written in 1989 when an attractive, young witch by the name of Jo Rowling stopped by for a visit. I showed her my work at which point she took it, put a memory charm on me, and left. But don’t feel bad for me. I have at least seven or eight other good ideas for stories that will earn forty billion dollars a pop.

Book Review

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the second installment in my Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It begins at the Dursley’s, where Harry meets Dobby the House Elf and ends when Harry discovers that Hermione is his sister just before confronting Vader in an epic light saber duel.

Wait a second, that doesn’t sound right. Hang on.

Ah, got it now! This is the story where Dobby the House Elf tries to keep Harry from going back to Hogwarts. Dobby makes three valiant attempts at this task by: 1) stealing Harry’s fan mail, 2) blocking the entrance to platform Nine and Three Quarters, and 3) breaking Harry’s arm. If you ask me, though, if Dobby were that intent on keeping Harry from school, I don’t know why he didn’t simply put a ten-month full body-bind curse on him. (Apparently Dobby rightfully realized that this wouldn’t make a very good story, and decided against it.)

Anyway, back to the story. Harry meets Voldemort a second time. But unlike last time, where Voldemort was nothing more than a nasty dermatological problem, this time he appears as a projected memory from a fifty year old diary.

Voldemort first meets Ginny when his diary is “accidentally” dropped into her cauldron at Diagon Alley. Long story short, Voldemort eventually lures her into the titular Chamber of Secrets where Harry comes to the rescue. Harry somehow beats his arch-nemesis to death with a red bird and a dirty old hat. Oh, and there’s something in there about a horcrux too, but we don’t find out about that until Book Six.

Overall, it’s a decent book, though admittedly my least favorite in the entire series. That being said, we did get one important piece of information out of it. Nearly Headless Nick has a deathday party where we discover he died exactly five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1492. That means Harry’s second year at Hogwarts begins in 1992. Cool, huh?

Movie Review

The first thing almost everyone noticed about the movie is how much lower Daniel Radcliff’s voice was than in the Sorcerer’s Stone. And as much as I like Kenneth Branagh, he just didn’t match up to my mental image of Gilderoy Lockhart. He played the part well—don’t get me wrong. But something about him just isn’t Gilderoy for me.

I think this is my favorite scene in the whole film:

That’s Ginny thinking, “It’s Harry Potter! The boy I’m going to kiss in Book Six!”

DVD Review

Two thumbs down on the DVD for having one of those 18 minute auto-play introductions that forces you to watch nearly every single scene in the movie before getting to the “Play” button.