Like the first movie, this plays like a bad clip show rather than a fully formulated movie. Scenes transition awkwardly from one to the other, never giving the feeling that they exist as real places in time for a group of friends in school. School itself is relegated to an almost non-entity, as the big mystery eventually takes hold. For being 2.5 hours, this is a film in which it never feels like enough has happened. In one sense, this is a good thing, as the laborious Draco Malfoy red herring only takes a few minutes to sort itself out -- whereas it consumes a huge chunk of the source book's length. The rest of the time, however, it results in something wholly inorganic and, mostly, boring. Chris Columbus is not a very good filmmaker and, for once, the dislike for him that caused me to skip out on these first two movies for so long turned out to be correct (though my reasoning for disliking him would've been something about him being generic and making "sappy movies," so let's not give young Basil too much credit).
I suppose calling him generic is accurate. He has very few visual ideas, for certain, as this movie is filled with moments of creepiness and/or strange realization that are accompanied by the camera slowly tracking in while rotating left and right (I guess, to suggest the discombobulation?). The films have none of the luster, the grand celebration and strange mystique that I imagine Hogwarts having for students. I guess that applies to everything -- nothing ever feels like it's on their level, nor is it on the adult level. Even when compared to Columbus' own meager Home Alone, it lacks a revelry in the stars' penchance for impish mischief. Everything is so sterile and stately and reverent. One need point to nothing besides Richard Harris' portrait of Dumbledore for exactly what is wrong with the series. His Dumbledore has all of the soft-spoken, approachable, yet dignified of a perfect Dumbledore, yet lacks any convincing humanity to make him seem like more than Masterpiece Theatre. Every attempt at the bemused goofines demonstrated in the book feels too self-conscious and wink-y. I guess that sums the whole thing up in a word: rigid. Everyone is apparently so afraid of making an unsuccessful movie that they forget how to do anything (except make creepy animatronic Mandrakes -- the stuff of nightmares those faces are).
Let's take, for a specific moment, the spiders. The climax of this scene was completely nonsensical to begin with, yet the movie finds a way to compound it by having it take place in a tightly packed thicket, to which the entrance looks almost exactly big enough for a car to fit through. It's like Columbus wanted to let everyone who'd read the book know right away, without any doubt, "don't worry -- we are gonna keep this awful scene exactly how you remember it."
On the plus side, Kenneth Brannagh somehow manages to be the best thing about the movie (surely for the first time in his career (zing)), using his tendency for theatrical acting to his advantage by turning the dial up ever so slightly into something that almost plays like a keen self-parody. Even Alan Rickman, previously the only person in Sorceror's Stone who didn't appear to be attending a funeral, is clearly a man who showed up for a few days to cash a paycheck and move on. Strangely, the trio of heroes managed to become worse actors in the space between first and second film. Or, perhaps, it was shuttled out so quickly that the creators didn't have time to properly mold every line reading. In either event, the children have never been even partway good since. How critics gag at the Twilight gang, yet suspend disbelief for Grint's hollowed out comic timing is, I suppose, evidence of a lot of theories: that people would rather see someone who looks like they are reading off a teleprompter than Stewart's tic-y willingness to risk absurdity, that suspension of disbelief is more malleable when castles and magic are involved (see: Orlando Bloom ever having a career), or the obvious idea that the source material's reputation gives it a boost when it comes to what is and is not questioned.
This is far more words than this movie probably deserves. I think I have a problem with conclusions in my reviews. I'd prefer to just stop when I have no more I feel like I want to say, yet I'm trying to practice writing semi-plausible essays instead of critical word-vomit.
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