Mild About 'Harry'

Mild About 'Harry'
'Chamber of secrets' is finally here: Our precocious
Hogwarts wizards are bursting with confidence, but the new film has more monsters and mayhem than magic

CHRIS COLUMBUS'S "HARRY Potter and the sorcerer's Stone" may have made many hundreds of millions of dollars, but only kids seemed to be genuinely enthusiastic about it.(A lot kids, to be sure.) Grown-ups, who were equally bewitched by J. K. Rowling's book, felt let down by the movie: it followed the letter of the tale but missed the spirit, mistaking special effects for magic. Would the film-makers learn from their mistakes in the second installment? Wanting to give the movie the benefit of the doubt, I avoided reading "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" before I saw Columbus's follow-up. This time the twists and turns of Harry's adventures at Hogwarts - where he encounters even greater perils - could take me by surprise.
The real surprise, alas, is that "chamber of secrets" has been turned into ...