by JOANNE LATIMER

Director Chris Columbus has found his pace. After laboriously explaining the inner world and lingo in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the director’s sequel is free to fly. And it does. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a rollicking adventure, including an aerial train chase, a fly-by kidnapping and a vengeful willow tree.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his mates are back for another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Dumbledore (the late Richard Harris) keeps order with his wise old ways. Maggie Smith is back as Professor Minerva McGonagall and good old Robbie Coltrane returns as the lovable-but-disgraced wizard, Hagrid. The cast is huge, with impossibly odd names, but none stand out as much as Kenneth Branagh, as the vain and fame-driven Gilderoy Lockhart.

Branagh nearly walks away with the show, playing a faker at Hogwarts who cannot save the day. His autobiography, Magical Me, is a blockbuster and it isn’t without a bit of cheek that Columbus directs these jabs at fame—considering J. K. Rowling’s rise to stardom. A secret chamber hidden in the school has been opened, unleashing an evil spirit who’s petrifying (literally) the “Mudbloods”—half-breed wizards and humans, known as muggles. Harry is a suspect, because of his advanced powers. He and his pals have to find the real villain to clear Harry and stop the carnage.

Carnage is a strong word for a kids’ film, but a word of warning, The Chamber of Secrets is a scary film. As in the first Harry Potter, the opening 10 minutes aren’t shy about the emotional and physical abuse Harry suffers in the home of his aunt and uncle. Then there’s the cat’s blood streaked on the wall, the forest of hungry spiders, the evil willow tree, the haunted bathroom, the Loch Ness Monster-type thing in the pond and the menace of Draco Malfoy and his father, Lucius (the yummy bad guy Jason Isaacs sporting a long white wig).

Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), the brainy girl with curls who was so popular on Halloween this year, is petrified for being a Mudblood, so Harry needs to save her by killing the monster. Harry fights at least two old-fashioned duels in the film—a wand-off with Malfoy Junior and a death battle with a sea monster. The six-year-old girl sitting beside me at the avant-premiere was brave throughout the tense battle scenes, but others were squirming. Harry gets impaled by a big tooth and bleeds from the arm before it’s all over, and some kids didn’t appreciate the blood. The healing tears from Dumbledore’s bird soon help Harry though, so it all works out, as you’d expect.

There’s plenty for adults to like in The Chamber of Secrets, but the most rewarding scenes belong to Branagh, an unbeatable rake, and the late Harris, whose shoes at Hogwarts are being filled with much speculation. It isn’t often that adults anticipate the third installment of a kiddie franchise, but the spell of Harry Potter is holding, fast. :

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets opens Friday, Nov. 15

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