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November 19, 2002, 8:45 a.m. Harry Potter’s Things The secret about The Chamber of Secrets.

t says something about Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — something not good — that its most memorable moments involve inanimate objects. In one truly wonderful scene, a boy wizard receives an angry letter from his mother. The letter, on red stationery, folds itself into the shape of a mouth and commences screeching at the boy. A talking hat that appeared in the first Harry Potter movie makes a delightful cameo appearance. Harry writes in a mysterious diary with blank pages. The diary answers him in an old-fashioned script.

Would that the characters were as charming, as haunting or as memorable as the letter, hat, and diary.

Apologists for director Chris Columbus's dispiriting and endless movie have been describing it as faster-paced, darker, and more frightening than the first. Frightening? Please. A viewer has to care about the character who's in danger in order to feel fear. But Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves do nothing to make us care about Harry Potter and his friends, teachers, and enemies. Instead, they expect us to feel something for the movie's characters based solely on the fact that they are based on characters in popular books — and because those characters are portrayed by actors who look a great deal like the illustrations in those popular books.

Sorry, but we need more, and Columbus is content to settle. The stunning failure of this second cinematic visit to J. K. Rowling's world of wizardry is its inability to make you feel much of anything. When Harry Potter is tormented by his cruel aunt and uncle, you don't feel bad for him. When Ron Weasley, Harry's friend, is threatened by spiders, you don't share his fear. When Hermione Granger, the spunky heroine, is frozen in place by a Medusa-like creature, there isn't even a moment's upset. When Haggrid, the lovable groundskeeper, is wrongly accused of a crime and imprisoned, it's as though he's just been given a few days off to take a vacation in Majorca. When he returns, the cast erupts in the most unearned standing ovation since the last Liza Minnelli performance.

Might all this affect or scare seven-year-olds? Possibly, but then you can still terrify a seven-year-old by saying "Boo." It's not much of an accomplishment to frighten them. It is an accomplishment to stir their imaginations and infuse their bedtimes with a sense of wonder and excitement. That's what J. K. Rowling has managed to do with her triumphant series of novels. She has revitalized children's literature by making it a grand adventure once more.

The two Harry Potter movies, by contrast, are plodding and dull and dutiful. They attempt to be faithful to the books, and yet the very qualities that make the books so glorious are entirely absent. The movies get everything right but still manage to get everything wrong.

Consider the flying car. Really, could there be anything more thrilling for a bunch of 12-year-olds like Harry and Ron than a flying car they get to drive? We see the flying car twice. And what we see is: A flying car. We don't get a sense of exhilaration, of liberation. What we get is a couple of kids in a car that happens to be flying.

Then there's the Quidditch match — a game played on flying broomsticks. Harry and other players get chased by something that looks like a cannonball. It slams into things and eventually causes Harry to break an arm. Nobody appears especially alarmed by the cannonball, and Harry doesn't even cry out in pain when his arm breaks.

By the time the movie comes to a blessed end 160 minutes after it began, Harry and his buddies have performed all kinds of heroics and saved any number of people, and yet there's no real sense that he has taken a journey and matured as a result of it. There's only the sense that Chris Columbus and Warner Bros. got the movie finished in time for its November release date.

Oh, and just because kids say they like or even love this movie, don't believe them. They say they love every movie.

— Mr. Podhoretz is a columnist for the New York Post.