The trouble with Harry

The result is that even though the narrative is faithfully detailed, few (if any) of those details capture our imaginations. After its deceptively fleet opening 20 minutes or so, "Chamber of Secrets" settles into a plodding amble, a rickety framework in which many allegedly exciting things happen (students are turned into stone by a mysterious and evil monster; the Weasleys' floating car shows up unexpectedly to bail Ron and Harry out of a terrifying scrape) and are forgotten only minutes later.

The connect-the-dots storytelling of "Chamber of Secrets" also ends up swallowing the actors. Kenneth Branagh is perfectly cast as Gilderoy Lockhart, the school's new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. You might call Lockhart the Cornel West of Hogwarts; he's the perfect embodiment of the glamour academic, the fellow who's happy to sign copies of his books for his adoring admirers, but who doesn't know (or care) enough about his specialty subject to be any good at teaching it to his students.

Branagh plays Lockhart with lots of grand, funny flourishes -- his lines seem meticulously articulated to match his artfully coiffed hair. The performance is a great in joke that riffs on the way Branagh is so intensely disliked at home in England (apparently, he's viewed as a grammar schoolboy who's just too keen), and Branagh rides that joke like a motorized broomstick. He's great fun to watch.

But mostly, the wonderful actors cast in this movie -- among them Maggie Smith as the stately professor McGonagall, Robbie Coltrane as Hogwarts' oversize and beloved groundskeeper Hagrid, and Miriam Margolyes as the crumpet-shaped professor Sprout -- end up blurring into the movie's background. Only the late Richard Harris, as professor Dumbledore, Hogwarts' headmaster, manages to distinguish himself -- he has only a handful of lines, but he puts so much gravity in them, and carries himself with so much careworn dignity, that the picture glows with life whenever he's on-screen. He's one of the few characters who actually seems to be living in the movie instead of just sweeping through it.

Rowling's books are wonderful for many reasons, not least because they understand how all of us, adults and children alike, yearn for a sense of community and belonging even as we long to set ourselves apart, to feel that we're loved and accepted not in spite of our oddities but because of them. They're also terrifically perceptive about the false hierarchies and prejudices that exist not just in the British school system but in schools everywhere -- or, more accurately, in societies everywhere.

But they wouldn't be as loved, or as successful, as they are if they weren't simply great stories with fascinating characters. "Chamber of Secrets" is discouraging not because it fails to recognize the power of Rowling's books -- it does -- but because Columbus, perhaps knowing he can't match that power, only bows and scrapes to it.

If you're looking for the "Movies can never live up to the books they're based on" argument, you won't get it here. Examining how great books survive the transition from page to screen (or don't) is one of the deepest pleasures of moviegoing. And adapting a beloved book is one of the biggest and most interesting challenges a filmmaker can take on.

But to make a great picture out of a great book, you need a filmmaker who's more than just a footservant at the hands of a master -- you need an artist, not a respectful lackey. The "Harry Potter" movies demand bravery, delicacy, imagination, daring, restraint -- a host of seemingly contradictory qualities. But those qualities can coexist, and when they do, you get magic. Directors like John Boorman, who made the exuberant, superbly mystical "Excalibur," or Alfonso Cuarón, whose "A Little Princess" is one of the greatest adaptations of a children's book ever made, have already proven it.

As luck would have it, Warner Bros. has recently announced that Cuarón will direct the next installment in this series, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." There in a nutshell is just one of the tantalizing promises that keeps us going to the movies. So far the "Harry Potter" franchise has proved to be a lifeless experiment in authenticity and faithfulness. But like Dumbledore's fabulous phoenix Fawkes, who burns to a pile of ash only to reappear as a huge and gorgeous creature with flame-red feathers, it may yet carry us away.

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