Hey, Things Must Be Looking Up- I'm Talking About Harry Potter!

[poliphilo]

We watched Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets last night- Ailz on her nine-inch bed-side TV and me on the wide screen at home. Afterwards we discussed it on the phone.

What did you think?

It was fun.

Yes- fun.

I like the Harry Potter films. Like not love. I don't find myself getting drawn into that world- enjoyable as it is- and I don't identify with any of the characters. As I've said before, I actually spent my teenage years at a faux-gothic boarding school in the middle of nowhere and- well- I find Rowling's vision a little starry-eyed.

God, but I bet all the other kids really resent and hate Harry and his chums for repeatedly saving the world and being feted and feasted at the end of the day!

Bloody, little, do-gooding teachers' pets!

And all the stories are exactly the same- and all the villains far too easy to defeat and that wimpy little Malfoy kid must be the least threatening (and worst-acted) screen villain in the history of the movies. All you have to do is look at him funny and he falls over.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the books. Perhaps I'll give one of the later ones a go.

I think I'd agree about Chamber of Secrets being the weakest of the films. It adds very little to what we learned in the first movie- and, of course, it's not as fresh.

But I liked Moaning Myrtle.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Actually I think the books suffer later on because no one wants to edit JK Rowling and they are less disciplined and more unweady.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It can be a bad thing if an author becomes untouchable. I seem to remember Iris Murdoch got to a stage where she was allowed to dispense with an editor and it's a pity- those enormous novels of her later years could really have done with some sharpening.