And behold, Jesus mud-wrestled the creature amidst the uterine juices of damnation.
And lo, it was icky.

Frankenstein’s Mobster.

MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN has the reputation for following its infamous source material closely – Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The fact that it follows the book only barely, and the fact that people yet put on airs when lauding the movie as authentic shows how much people actually read.

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in this fevered, overwrought encomium to mad scientists and the monsters they create. Young scientist Victor Frankenstein (Branagh), inspired by boundary-pushing life-preservation experiments in 19^th century Geneva, contrives a method to create the spark of life in dead flesh. After experimenting with animals, bringing them back from death, Frankenstein constructs a man from body parts scavenged in science labs and graveyards – and reanimates him. Then, like every good Reality TV parent, Frankenstein abandons the creature. The reanimated man (played by Robert De Niro, in what looks like extremely painful makeup) is shunned by his creator, and embarks on a killing spree as a cry for help. At least, that’s what the creature says…

Frankenstein keeps the “monster” a secret from his betrothed Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), and best friend Clerval (Tom Hulce). (I feel so sorry for Hulce in this role. At the time, he was cultivating a reputation of accepting only noteworthy acting gigs, which were rare. After his magnificent turn as a titan himself in 1984’s AMADEUS, this period piece, with its caliber of talent and majestic intent, seemed like a natural progression for him. Alas, his talents are muted by the material and the lackluster filmmaking.) Ian Holm is dad, on his gigantic English estate; Richard Briers is the old blind man with whom the monster finds a moment’s respite, and John Cleese makes an excellent serious cameo as an outlaw professor.

Historical Fact: early dildos just looked like monkey paws.

An element of the film that fakes us into believing it is loyal to the novel is the opening sequence featuring Aidan Quinn as Captain Walton, helming a foundering ship through arctic ice and coming upon Frankenstein pursuing his creature. The whole tale is then told in flashback by Frankenstein. This device is also used to frame the novel, but the novel goes deeper, telling it from the point of view of Walton relating Frankenstein’s tale, who, in turn, devotes a large chunk of dialogue to relating his creature’s tale, so the book seems like three flashbacks in one.

Another significant inclusion from the book: THE CREATURE SPEAKS! We have been so inundated with the avalanche of Frankenstein media (starting with the original 1931 film FRANKENSTEIN, starring Boris Karloff as the Monster) that portrays the creature as a big dumb galoot that we forget the creature was endued with a functioning brain and was quite articulate. (We can’t help thinking of Marty Feldman in Mel Brooks’s YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, choosing a brain for the creature, marked “Abby Normal”…)

Of all the deviations from the book, there are two that benefit the film; first, John Cleese’s brain in the creature (Cleese is Professor Waldman, killed by a fanatic, whose head is cut into by Frankenstein for his intellect); second, instead of reanimating a nameless grab of body parts at the creature’s insistence of a female mate, Frankenstein reanimates his own lover – the murdered Elizabeth!

The Cleese-brain plot point is wasted, as the creature is struck on the head by a falling beam when birthed, effectively negating all those potentially interesting avenues involving a professor’s brain driving the leviathan. However, the reanimated-Elizabeth plotline is undoubtedly ominous and actually “scary.” In a weeping fervor, Frankenstein lops off the head of his original female (in this story, she is a relative of Frankenstein’s that the creature murdered; in the novel, a clutch of body-parts) and stitches on dead Elizabeth’s head (obviously following the handbook on Medical Procedures Made Simple.) When she comes to, Bonham Carter gives a disturbing performance as someone slowly discovering they are reanimated.

As Superman was the first true cinematic superhero, Frankenstein created the first cinematic Monster. In this telling, we sidle up pretty close to Shelley’s original vision of the creature itself – an intelligent being shunned and lonely, seeking revenge for the forced life thrust upon it – but even one of the world’s greatest actors cannot make us feel any compassion toward this poorly fleshed-out, tragic beast.

I truly think the problem lies in Shelley’s original work, for her Victor Frankenstein is a confused character whose emotions turn on a dime when it comes to desire to create a living being and then revulsion once that being is created. And so Branagh tries to portray that fickleness in the movie, but this is not a natural human reaction, so it misses the dramatic mark: When his new man-creature is birthed (in a scene that dwells too long on both Branagh and a naked De Niro entwined like female wrestlers in sensual amniotic slime), the creature is inadvertently chained and knocked unconscious. What does Franky do? Leave the creature hanging there and starts contemplating his navel. Are you a scientist, man?! Start doing tests, examining the creature’s metabolism, heart rate, skin regeneration, reflexes, etc.! What’s with all this philosophical mooning?

“We shall ride so hard that I will explode in my pantaloons from your mannequin buttocks rubbing urgently against me.”

Shelley creates a great allusion in the subtitle of her book, The Modern Prometheus, but chooses to go the route of simple-minded murder than the more interesting plot of society being exposed to this scientific wonder. As Prometheus stole forbidden knowledge of the gods and bequeathed it to Man, Victor Frankenstein treads that crucible, so we can excuse a modicum of self-examination and fear, but cannot we also revel in the unbounded excellence of the experiment’s success?

We must recall Mary Shelley was 18 when she penned this tale. Though her writing style is grandiose and exhibits a vocabulary which puts modern 18-year-olds to shame, her knowledge of scientific practices and story devices like characterization and motivation was virtually nil. She did a great job capturing the essence of a disturbing idea that probes at a primal fear of mankind – which is why the tale is so universally embraced – however she blithely set forth her characters’ actions, sprinkled liberally with flowery language, and hoped to disguise the fact there was hardly any substance behind their deeds.

The creature is also quite shallow, birthed with the intellect of an infant, soon turning to murder for no reason other than to jealously bait his creator. (And why do we perfunctorily call the creature a “monster” anyway? The “monster” epithet could probably be applied after he starts killing people, but we are conditioned to think of him as that from the outset!) And De Niro doesn’t help, seemingly just reading his lines and waiting for the knockoff bell to take off this goddam makeup. His leaden performance leads us to believe someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Shelley’s novel never mentions the process by which the living person is created, because – she was not a scientist, but every Frankenstein movie has utilized electricity/lightning to reanimate the creature. A creative new device here is – electric eels!

In the final telling, MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN has merits and demerits that cancel each other out. At least it’s sincere in trying to be authentic. But in its adherence to Shelley’s dated, drab approach, it becomes as inauthentic as all the other Frankensteins ever loosed into cinema. What do I mean by this? Well, as an example, the creature never raises his voice; he speaks calmly and articulately, because that was the ethos of the day – intelligent conversation, not Running and Screaming. The “terror” has not been updated to today’s “entertainment” standards.

The filmmakers also fail to convey the true intended horror of Frankenstein’s tale – the forbidden “tampering in God’s domain.” Although there is no religiosity in Shelley’s work, that unholy element was the unspoken heretical dread of creating life from nothing back in the 1800s. It was a trespass unforgivable. No one is getting that message now. Partly because we have become inured to the Frankenstein story over decades, partly because spiritual outrage is a thing of the past, and partly because the acting is so mediocre.

Next: THE GODFATHER PART IV, starring Abby Normal.

END

Order off the Menu.

Nothing’s pulling the carriage, Harry. It’s pulling itself, like always…
— Hermione, ORDER OF THE PHOENIX.

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX reminds us of how Jor-El’s warnings to Krypton’s elders went unheeded, and how Krypton paid the price. In PHOENIX, the demon wizard Voldemort is back – but no one believes the people claiming this – Harry Potter and Dumbledore. Even using scientific evidence, Jor-El could not convince Krypton their planet was going to explode; how then do Harry and Dumbledore prove Voldemort’s return with only the amorphous, pointless, rule-less faculty of magic to aid them? I don’t blame the council of old farts for not believing.

ORDER OF THE PHOENIX exhibits the same problems of disjointedness as its predecessors, not because it omits material from J.K. Rowling‘s book of the same name – but because the filmmakers (new screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, and new director David Yates) do not structure their movie as a stand-alone tale. They rely too much on audiences having a priori knowledge of the Harry Potter universe, so the movie just barges along with no thought to setups, exposition, foreshadowing or payoffs.

The two major plot threads in PHOENIX are the return of Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) to battle Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), and a totalitarian witch (Imelda Staunton) ousting Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) as headmaster and taking over Hogwarts school. When these two plotlines are followed, the story chugs along swimmingly. As soon as movie deviates from these threads for the sake of inserting book material for diehards, it’s like Hermione says, “It’s pulling itself, like always”…

Movie opens very grimly indeed, as Harry and his bullying step-brother Dudley (Harry Melling, replete with goombah gold necklace) are attacked by Dementors. Harry uses magic to deter the beasts and is put on trial for using magic openly. These scenes are dark visually and metaphysically, not least because:

Sky turns from sunny to overcast in mere seconds to reflect the encounter;
A strange woman tells Harry she was sent by Dumbledore to watch over him;
The court of wizards ignores all sanity and reason;
Dumbledore ignores Harry in a disturbing manner, even whilst defending him in court;
Richard Griffiths (Harry’s stepdad) is now so morbidly obese in real life, he looks like he’s gonna die any second – and that’s truly disturbing.

The tone remains pretty dark like this, to the movie’s credit, but it just… meanders sometimes.

At Hogwarts, a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is hired, Dolores Umbridge (Staunton), a Republican absolutist in a vomit pink dress who is institutionally insane. Forget the black-robed special effects, the most terrifying horror of all is the old white woman with the closed mind in the position of power.

With waves of her wand Umbridge battens down on the dress code, on students kissing in public, on the desired distance between them, on a hundred other codes that she posts outside her office. When she punishes Harry by making him write lines, each line he writes is simultaneously inscribed painfully on his hand!

When she tries to arrest Dumbledore to banish him to Azkaban prison, he claps his hands above his head and in a blast of dramatic phoenix-fire, disappears. Which raises the question: How do they apprehend ANYONE to take to Azkaban prison?

Students rebel against Umbridge’s totalitarian regime and gather in a secret room, electing Harry their new magic tutor. Harry (now a true teen, short-cropped hair, voice broken, balls dropped) seems to be the only person at Hogwarts to have achieved anything remotely cinematic – killing the Basilisk, defeating 100 Dementors, etc. – and we gain a perspective on his accomplishments; without him, this motley collection of witches and wizards would be called St. Crispin’s School for the Terminally Mundane. He teaches them that the hardest part of casting spells like “Expeliamus” and “Expecto Patronum” is admitting you’re gay.

With his newfound masculinity, Harry stupidly makes a move on the Asian-American chick (Katie Leung); “stupidly” because Hermione is still in the wings, being ultra-hot, but mitigating that hotness with her lack of understanding on how to grow into her role as a young adult; I’m saying she’s a terrible actor. Harry’s and Katie’s lips actually touch, but the camera makes it a point to pan up their bodies to ensure Republican parents that their bodies do not.

Evanna Lynch is Luna, a bottle-blond creepy chick who sees dead horses. David Thewlis is back, as is Gary Oldman, both in a secret Order of the Phoenix (mentioned once then forgotten), amassing to do battle with Voldemort. Helena Bonham Carter is a bad witch; in and out of the story for no reason. Emma Thompson has a small cameo as the useless soothsayer. Brendan Gleeson brings his mad eye. And Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy struts around with his hair set on Charlie’s Angel.

It’s lucky that all the stars and B-characters retained their looks and shapes as they aged. None of them turned into fat, ugly people or had limbs replaced or joined a cult and got face tattoos. What are the odds that such a large production could retain so much of its main onscreen cast like this?

Apparently, you can only see those emaciated horse specters “only if you’ve seen death” like Harry and the creepy chick. That’s why Hermione couldn’t see the specter pulling the carriage and thought the carriage was “pulling itself.” Later, all the kids – including Hermione – are fly-riding those horse specters to London. You lost me at Making It Up As You Go Along.

Climax sees massive posedowns between Voldemort and Gary Oldman, Voldemort and Dumbledore, Voldemort and Hansel (he’s so hot right now!) – in the best lightshow a computer can regurgitate, Volde cheesing it up and Dumble matching him pound for pound in Limburger and Swiss. In the end, everything peters out because – magic.

It’s pulling itself, like always…

END

Goblet-de-gook.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE continues the disjointed adventure of the world’s most famous boy wizard; not so much a feature film as a laundry list of tasks performed by two-dimensional characters, told with no logic, less motivation and lots and lots of not very special effects. It’s Magic! That’s great! Fuck you!

It surely seems like the most rushed movie in the series so far, as we meet Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson, growing more legal with each film), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and the Weasley family teleporting to the Quidditch World Cup via an old boot. No characterizations, no introductions, no logic – no surprise. Already I’m fuming over the pointlessness of an old boot in a field being a teleport device. As if hearing my inner monologue on the Riddikulusness of his world, Harry exclaims he “loves magic,” when they walk into their small tent and find it has an interior as capacious as the storyteller’s lack of imagination…

Did I mention the Quidditch World Cup? A game with no rules apparently has an annual meet! Some guys in Klan hoods called Death Eaters (which sounds ominous – until you think about it) attack the festival, and I wonder how anyone could tell it was an external attack and not simply one of the regular rule-less, lethal activities that takes place in every single Quidditch game ever played.

Off to Hogwarts, where two other schools of weirdoes (Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, arriving in a sunken ship and a Pegasus-drawn chariot respectively) visit for a Triwizard Tournament, a competition that can’t make up its mind on whether to be lethal or pointless, in the end choosing both, with a buttload of stupid thrown in. The competitors are chosen from a goblet of fire that spits out their names. No student under 17 can enter. Of course, that doesn’t matter in the least for 14-year-old Harry, whose name is ejaculated by the goblet, the reason given later as Making It Up As It Goes Along. All the adults in the room are cowed by this magical chalice because that’s how religions roll: even if it’s illogical, irrational or lethal to the youngsters, we’re still going to do it because the magical thing told us to. In a world where a man can talk through flaming coals, and where people follow a hologram bouncing ball to sing the school song, why is everyone so surprised that a floating goblet spat out a name that was never entered into it? It’s Magic – that’s great – fuck you.

Ron (who has pumped himself up to actually look sexier than Radcliffe in real life) has a bromantic tiff with Harry, which is so badly acted, I thought I was watching a HARRY POTTER film directed by Mike Newell. Regular screenwriter Steve Kloves (piggybacking off author J.K. Rowling‘s childish storytelling) has given Harry a roving eye in this movie, as he makes eyes (and eyes only) at the plainest chicks on campus; while Hermione’s constant whining seems to indicate she’s met Aunt Flow for the first time. Nonetheless, when some Russian guy asks her out, one would think her faithfulness to her constant male pals up to this point would give her pause but no, she bends over quicker than a nun in heat.

(Interesting to note that in press junkets whenever Emma Watson is asked what it was like to kiss her two familiar male leads, she would pass it off “like kissing her brothers” usually followed by qualifications like “yuk”; while Radcliffe and Grint would describe the experience in more effusive terms, “Quite nice actually…” etc. Need I say: typical. The guys all want to do her, while she has relegated all of them to The Friend Zone.)

Brendan Gleeson arrives as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody. This post has become the revolving door role for the HARRY POTTER series: I guess no one really has a good defense against the dark arts.

Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) finds romance with a tall visitor to the school who looks like a transvestite.

Sirius Black (who used to be Gary Oldman in the last film, here, an irritating hologram of coals) sends a message via owl to Harry… these “magical” people using owls as messengers, almost as technological as the Pony Express. I could show you something really magical – it’s called e-mail.

Robert Pattinson is Cedric Diggory, also chosen by the goblet, older friend to Harry and not yet Team Edward.

First task is to grab a dragon’s egg. They’re schoolkids and they’re being pitted against an animal that can fry them to ash. Has any student received their parents’ written consent for this? It’s like a Quidditch game: no rules, no logic, and no point.

The school dance, and author J.K. Rowling shows us she hasn’t got the first clue on how to write teen romance. First of all, Harry is a dragon slayer – and he can’t get a date?! And as wingman, Ron should be woiking Harry’s spoils until the wheels fall off! Yet both of them mope around like eunuchs, lamenting chicks. All philandering aside, this is the sequence where everything should revolve around the male and female leads (specifically, Harry and Hermione) and their hidden emotions for one another; instead, Hermione acts like an incognizant whore waiting to be deflowered by Dolph Lundgren, while Ron shoots barbs at her like a jealous lover and Harry stoops nearby like a Just Friend.

And I eventually have to admit to myself: I don’t give an owl’s hoot what happens to Harry Potter! I really don’t care about this loser wanker’s fate any more. He is the titular hero of this series and with every passing film, he is emasculated to the point where we stop caring whether he actually owns a wand and whether he ever intends to use it. It is so obvious this tale is written by a girl because Harry is not spending every moment of every day thinking about the inside of Hermione’s thighs. Like the rest of male-kind. Keep on being a Just Friend, Harry. It’s not your fault; you’re just written that way.

Tween girls swoon over Harry’s puerile, pasty chest as he steps naked into a bath. A bath? Yeah, just trying to wash those last vestiges of penis off his body. A ghost girl visits and he modestly tries to cover himself, scared she’ll see his pierced vagina.

Next task: hold your breath for an hour under a lake and look for a mermaid’s McGuffin. Harry is terrified that he can’t hold his breath for an hour. That’s easy: use MAGIC, idiot! Everyone else will. Better still, use a freakin’ scuba suit! But why does he have to be “told” of gilliweed? I’m sure that if friend Neville didn’t mention it in passing, anyone else on campus might have told him a million different methods to breathe underwater. It’s magic that’s great fuck you.

And then the maze, an almost tense sequence where Team Edward and Team Potter must find something-something. Are they going to use their magic telepathic gifts? Is there a pulse beacon? No, they’re going to use the scientific method of Running Around Blindly trying to find it. Where’s the drama? Where’s the effort? Where’s Waldo? Then they’re teleported to a graveyard where Harry meets —

LORD VOLDEMORT! And all Ralph Fiennes Cheese breaks loose! Suddenly the tone changes to something eerie, mature, thrilling. Everything comes together in this graveyard scene and makes absolutely less sense that it was already not making, as Voldemort proves his power over Harry, who cringes like a girl baby. Taking elocution lessons from the Emperor in RETURN OF THE JEDI, Voldemort sneers, “I’m going to kill you, Harry Potter,” with the same insouciance as the Emperor’s, “And now young Skywalker, you will die.” Then he proceeds to do exactly what the Emperor did to young Skywalker – not kill him.

Harry escapes, and later tells Dumbledore, “Professor, at one point in the graveyard, Voldemort’s wand and mine touched!” That’s called docking, I think. Or just “touch-tips.”

GOBLET OF FIRE then ends on a sigh of defeat, as Hermione, Ron and Harry walk away talking about nothing; placing them together here at the end only highlighting the fact that they are farther apart than ever. And we hardly care.

It’s magic

that’s great

fuck you

END

Azkabana-fo-fana.

Harry Potter’s getting on to “that age.” At the opening of HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, we meet him in bed under the blankets, playing with his wand.

And Hermione is – how shall I say this without sounding as perverse as the rest of you who deny you’re looking? – budding…

And Ron is still a mourning-faced creature.

But you know what this movie needs? More Gary please!

The great Gary Oldman almost stars in HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN as Sirius Black, a wizard escaped from Azkaban prison, on his way to kill wizard prince Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe). “Almost” because the whole movie is spent talking about him or seeing his face on a Wanted poster; and when we do meet him in the bedlam third act, his only meaty interaction with the other characters involves shouting action lines and being a werewolf half the time, so it’s a tragedy for us – and for the movie. We can see he’s been taking “oily” lessons from Guy Pearce, and he hasn’t bathed since he was Beethoven.

Expecto a batho.

Still, the HARRY POTTER franchise lifts itself slightly with this third installment (following CHAMBER OF SECRETS), helmed by dark lord Alfonso Cuarón (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN), instead of milky waif Chris Columbus. As the three child stars are older, the rating has moved from G to PG-13, so even as Sirius Black tracks Harry, we are afforded more sinister scares with the ominous specters called Dementors tracking Black.

Also, Lord Voldemort has re-entered the Potter tale, as a menacing presence in the background, whom Black is allegedly courting by killing Harry.

So the film is more mature than its predecessors, yet PRISONER OF AZKABAN retains a confused and contradictory forced tapestry of characters and motivations that I’m sure their demographic are too young to apprehend. Throw in a time-travel denouement and this confounded tale buckles under its own weight. As the emperor said in AMADEUS: Too many notes…

Film once again opens in the home that Harry shares with his unloving step-parents, where Harry is goaded into expanding his annoying aunt into a zeppelin that floats out the window. Thankfully, like the Hulk, her knickers stay on. Harry should apparently be penalized by the Wizard Assemblage Neon Knights of English Royal Society (W.A.N.K.E.R.S for short), but is spared the humiliation, and given special dispensation by the Accidental Magic Reversal Department (yeah, and that one I didn’t make up).

He runs away from home, and is picked up by a magic bus, which seems to be a part of the real traffic environment, yet can alter itself to circumvent the environment, as when it needs to squeeze through traffic. Again, no rules, ergo, no tension. How does inertia keep affecting it when Harry is thrown forward as it brakes hard? Why steer?

I hate magic.

Harry is dropped off at an inn where he meets Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). Is author J.K. Rowling making this up as she goes along? Why are Ron and Hermione at this inn? It’s not like everyone ran away from home and needs a transitory shelter before heading back to Hogwarts. Halfway through the first act and you’ve already lost my emotional investment. Even with chest buds.

On the way to Hogwarts, a Dementor attacks the train. It’s looking for Sirius Black but it’ll kill anyone for being black and nearby. Kinda like cops: we’re looking for criminals, but we’ll use violent force on anybody during business hours.

At Hogwarts, there’s a new Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) because sadly, Richard Harris went to that great wizard party in the sky. Dumble warns the children that Dementors are patrolling the school grounds, on the lookout for Sirius. Does anybody else think Dumbledore exhibited unbounded irresponsibility in allowing Dementors on school grounds; beings that he admits are so incognizant they cannot or will not discern between Sirius and a passing school kid? Someone call Child Services on this senile goat!

David Thewlis commands the best role in this film. As new Professor Lupin of Dark Arts, he doesn’t seem stunt cast – like Branagh in the last film, or Emma Thompson in this film, as eccentric soothsayer Sybil – he seems born to be a wizard, like Alan Rickman (Snape) or Gambon. A well-rounded character that is a boon to Harry, ready with knowledge and a helping hand when needed. And a Patronum, whatever the hell that is.

We can safely say this movie is where all the Expecto Patronum started. Expecto Patronum! Jeez, can you make me feel any dirtier? Lupin also teaches the kids the Riddikulus charm; I’m biting not only my lip but my whole face: a spell that you use when confronted with a terrifying thing, to turn it into something comical. Oh my god, there’s not enough soap in my grocery store to wash off this dirtiness I’m feeling right now…

Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) introduces his class to a winged eagle-horse called a hippogriff (which is an appropriate name, as hippo means horse in Latin, and griff means that big dumb galoot from BACK TO THE FUTURE II.)

Sybil teaches the kids how to read tea leaves and finds a “grim” in Harry’s cup, wolf-shaped leaves that presage his death. Royt… the fact that he lives through five more films is irrelevant – prophesy is always right, right?

During the Quidditch game, Dementors attack Harry, because again, so dumb they can’t tell a wizard’s elbow from his arsehole. Since Quidditch has no rules anyway, and anyone can do anything at any time for any reason, no one figured the Dementors shouldn’t have been on the field of play – not that they were on the field of play, because there is no defined field of play in Quidditch; and no one could tell they were sucking out Harry’s soul because every Tom, Dick and Draco tries to do that during every Quidditch game anyway. Only when Harry falls off his vaginal broom does Dumbledore stand and gesture, “Arresto momentum!” He didn’t really just say that, did he? By now, I’ve sunk so low in my seat out of embarrassment, it looks empty. Or should I say it looks Evacuo Chairo.

Harry’s broomstick breaks in the fall. Lupin: “I’m sorry to hear about your broomstick. Is there no chance of fixing it?” Harry says no [needle scratch]– Are you kidding me? You’ve just been thigh-humping this broomstick like a personal jetpack against all the laws of physics, Dumbledore just arrestoed your fall from 1000 feet; a supernatural wraith tried to suck out your life essence – and THERE’S NO WAY TO FIX YOUR VAGINA-HUGGING BROOMSTICK? Have you tried Elmer’s Glue and some frickin’ nails?

Harry uses his cloak of invisibility – but if it’s not to spy on Hermione, then I don’t really care.

The twist is that Sirius is not really trying to kill Harry but shout a few action lines and pick up a paycheck. Harry saves Sirius’s life saying Expecto Patronum so many times that *I* almost disappeared in embarrassment. Then a white stag appears and chases away the dark specters. Yay. For no reason. Even when we discover how the white stag appeared, it still has no reason to be a white stag. Unless, of course, there’s a deeper phallic meaning, or a cry for help from Harry over how Rowling is slowly making him too douchey for words…  I love reading all the apologists debating over why a white stag, why a Patronus, why a time loop, why no girls will touch them…

Over and above all the expecto boolshitus adventures, there’s Hermione’s time traveling/shark jumping. Woven into the story like an OCEAN’S TWELVE post-exposition, only the nerds care whether her chrono anomalies jigsaw into the body of the tale; everyone else is just happy to see Hermione in that jumper and those jeans –cough, chestbuds–

As we’ve already discovered, all these kids are at “that age”; gearing up to be swatted flat with hormonal discharges enough to knock over an elephant. Inevitably the question of “romance” will arise in this episode – in the most surprising, offhanded manner. I think everyone in the world took it for granted Hermione and Harry would be an item. How shocking then, during a traumatic moment, when Hermione instinctively embraces RON WEASLEY instead of Harry! Harry moves up behind Hermione like a third wheel and tries to… uh, uh, spoon her meaningfully, but the moment has been lost and it is forced and embarrassing. It is staged in this way on purpose; to set up Ron’s future relationship with this world’s greatest spinner. In one small move, Harry has been emasculated and excised from the emotional loop. You might think this intimate move is nothing consequential, but a move like this is always consequential. To paraphrase Vincent Vega in PULP FICTION, “We act like it don’t mean somethin’ – and that’s what’s so cool about it – but it always means somethin’!”

This ruins the franchise. Our hearts are just not in it anymore. By 2014, even Rowling would regret not bowing to convention and simply pairing the two leads; at the very least, she might have created sexual tension between them until they were of legal age. Now everything that comes after that hug looks obtuse and pointless. When Harry and Hermione ride that wild, frothing beast from BACK TO THE FUTURE and Harry makes a comment to Hermione, no matter what he says, he’s stuck in the Friend Zone now, never to return, so nothing he says can be taken seriously anymore.

Is this what Sybil actually meant when she predicted the death of Harry Potter in the tea leaves? Is this the hidden meaning behind Harry unable to fix his broom?

Coitus Patronum Interruptus, Harry! Even the Accidental Magic Reversal Department can’t save you from this one…

END

The Chamber of Feebness.

The sequel to HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, continues the richly-layered story of young wizard Harry Potter and his friends in their second year at Hogwarts, the school for enunciating British kids. A monster awaits in a chamber of secrets and only Harry can defeat it using numerous deus ex machinae.

At his step-parents’ home in London, we catch up with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) meeting the bastard son of Gollum and Yoda EPISODE II – Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones), a self-flagellating, sado-masochist house elf, who warns him not to go back to Hogwarts. Harry is determined to find a way back though, and Dobby, for some reason, frames Harry with some mischief that, in any sane person’s house, would guarantee Harry would be kicked out of the house and back to boarding school. I’m missing the boat on the motivations of Harry’s step-parents; instead of getting rid of this boy they hate with a vengeance, they exile him to his room. Though how can mere bars on a window stop a magical person from escaping?

Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and his ginger bros break Harry out in a flying car– Stop right there – a thousand questions: Is the CAR flying? Or is it their WILL that is making the car fly? Why bother steering? It’s got no ailerons, stabilizers, rudders; does it run on gas?–

The overpopulated Weasley clan is introduced to Harry and they all teleport via green flame to Diegone Alley. Though instructed to speak clearly for the chant, Harry, who up to this point has spoken like an English professor on Branagh Juice, decides to pronounce it “dia-gon-ally” and gets transported diagonally into someone’s arsehole, we presume. No matter, for in this wretched place he meets Hermione (Emma Watson) – and the film at last becomes watchable.

What? Yes, I’ve noticed she’s grown, but I’m not looking there. Glorious. That aquiline nose, those waterfall locks… She repairs his glasses, “Oculis Repairos” (can you make me feel a little dirtier with those dumb spells, please?); you’d think he’d learn that spell himself, being a glasses-wearer. But maybe that’s his way of cultivating her little wizmuff.

The HARRY POTTER movies are well-made films (this sequel also directed by Chris Columbus), exquisite detail lavished on every scene, with excellent acting and production values. Yet I keep losing interest at regular intervals. Reason: magic. The Potterheads scream in my face, “But LORD OF THE RINGS (this series’ most obvious competition) has magic too!” Yes it does, but wields it in a more sensible manner. Every time the POTTER series uses arbitrary magic with no payoff or purpose, I roll my eyes and go, “Expecto Wankforus!” For example: Why are they changing animals into wine goblets? Is there any point to this at all? Any application in the real world? Any reason for it in the wizarding world? Is there any payoff? Harry breaks his arm and it’s immediately fixed by magic. That’s nice. Why write that it broke in the first place if the fix was so easy? And Dobby can make objects float, teleport, shoot fire out of his fingers – I mean, how does such a powerful creature become a slave in the first place?

When something is called “magical” it means it resembles magic (which is irrational, illogical and follows no laws of physics). It’s almost an insult. So you can’t call a HARRY POTTER film “magical” because it’s not like magic – it IS magic. It is irrational, illogical and follows no laws; the world of Harry Potter is unpredictable in the worst of ways. Any scientist will tell you that if the real world was as devoid of physics laws as this series of movies, everything in the Universe would be dead or in a state of chronic chaos.

The main cast all return, with an addition: Kenneth Branagh is new professor Gilderoy Lockhart, comic relief for the sinister Snape (Alan Rickman), and the one shining light in this movie (besides Hermione). In a fantastically cheesy performance, he’s the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher, more involved with his own legend than teaching, five-time winner of the Most Charming Smile award.

We are also introduced to Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s (Tom Felton) dad, as glamorously fey with that long white hair, creating a red herring as the bad guy, but he’s only a bad guy to Dobby, who finger-fries him later anyway. A pointless subplot.

The House of Slytherin (who are regarded as tacit “bad guys” in the school pecking order) built the chamber of secrets, to unleash a horrible monster and purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic. It’s all very scary until we realize it makes no sense; that the chamber is somewhere under the girl’s bathroom, and that the monster is just a big snake that is easily defeated by Harry because of a magic hat, a magic sword, a magic phoenix and a screenwriter (Steve Kloves) who puts them all together because author J.K. Rowling ran out of ideas.

Look at these two idiots hugging EACH OTHER!

With Weasley’s worried face working overtime, he and Harry drink a potion to turn them into two other guys. It’s FACE/OFF for nerdists! The same potion turns Hermione into a cat! Don’t even ask– but are you trying to make me commit statutory master stroking? She says in horror, “Look at my face!” Weasley (in one of his few smiling moments – or should that be ‘leering’) replies, “Look at your tail!” Oooh, I am, I am. You’re already thinking about it, aren’t you, Ronnie?

As the filmmakers stole Dobby from LOTR, now they steal the spider sequence from the same Peter Jackson series. Hundreds of giant spiders surround Ron and Harry –cough, Shelob!– their magic flying car saves them in the nick of plagiarism. (So the car does have a will of its own – or were one of them mind-controlling it? And if it can think for itself as it rescues them, why bother steering and gearing?… Oh, it’s “flight gear” is jammed, so it can’t fly? A physical lever to control a metaphysical action? You lost me at Making It Up As You Go Along…)

And then – Boredom, thy name is Quidditch. One of the balls chases after Harry. It’s obviously “tampered with,” but does the game stop? No. Draco keeps bashing into Harry maliciously in full view of all spectators. But does the game stop? No. Rules like World Championship Wrestling. When Harry breaks his arm, in a school full of magic professors, they let the comic relief Gilderoy fix it.

Christian Coulson is Tom Riddle, who gives us a Bond exposition to pad the film’s climax, and to give Dumbledore’s phoenix time to fly down into the catacombs and drop off a hat to Harry, in which materializes a magic sword to– ah, forget it!… Then smartypants Riddle mouths off that his spirit is in the magic book lying right next to Harry. Geez, Harry, spirit in book, basilisk tooth in hand; how about stabbing the tooth into the book to stop it from yapping and telling everyone how to stop it?

Phoenix drips tears on Harry’s wound. He heals like Wolverine. Magic. Love it. Anything goes.

Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) arrives back from Azkaban prison. We never even knew he left. As the school cheers him like the star of the show, we are left wondering whose bitch he was.

END