Just as our bespectacled hero is happy to have his first year at Hogwarts behind him, so are the filmmakers relieved to have gotten the first film out of the way at this point in the series. This sequel has all the technical witchcraft and wizardry you’d expect, yet what’s more important is the collective sigh of relief you hear coming from the screen. Chamber of Secrets is still faithful to a fault, but the movie’s spirit is more spontaneous. The series has progressed from reciting the source novels by J.K. Rowling to paraphrasing them.
