Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - ep 57

In the second installment of the immensely successful film series, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley must solve a mystery and not die, and they have to do it all with limited help from their ever-resourceful friend, Hermione Granger. Wait, what? A movie where Hermione has almost nothing to do? What the hell, J.K. Rowling?!

Last November, Old Millennials Remember Movies covered the first “Harry Potter” movie, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” We showed it to our kids and tried to a. scare them and b. get them excited about a franchise we love. Neither goal really worked out, but here we are this November trying it again.

When “Chamber of Secrets” arrived in theaters in 2002, Old Millennials Tyler and Angie were just finishing high school and still pretending to be cooler than kids who like “Harry Potter” movies. Still, we generally liked this movie when it came out, but time hasn’t been kind to this particular installment. Though based on the shortest book, “Chamber of Secrets” is the longest movie, and it takes a lot of time on side-adventures that factor little into the plot of a beast petrifying cats and ghosts and kids around Hogwarts. Plus there’s more Quidditch, this time with better-but-still-lousy CGI, and here’s your annual reminder that Quidditch doesn’t make any GD sense. Also, for several examples of gross negligence committed by teachers at a private school, look no further than “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”!

In this Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets podcast episode, Tyler and Angie discuss the good stuff (Jason Isaacs! Kenneth Branagh! Giant spiders!) alongside some of the reasons why the franchise needed a new direction for “Prisoner of Azkaban.” We also discuss the 35-year-old playing teenage ghost Moaning Myrtle, Roger Ebert’s creepy review of the movie, why young Dumbledore doesn’t look like Jude Law, and Dobby, an elf that repeatedly makes the correct decision to bash himself in the head. Hit it harder, dummy.

Find our Old Millennials podcast episode on “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” HERE. It was episode 23, and it was brilliant, probably.

Also discussed this episode:

The Lighthouse (2019)
Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
Forever (TV series)

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