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United Kingdom, a stylised version of the present. Harry Potter, an adolescent wizard, finds a house elf named Dobby in his Surrey home who warns him not to return to his school Hogwarts. Harry's friends, the Weasley family, rescue him from the house in a flying car. At Hogwarts an inscription appears in blood one night announcing that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Soon staff and students become petrified by unexplained means. Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger investigate, and learn that the school co-founder Slytherin had a monster sealed up in the chamber a thousand years ago. The chamber has been opened now, as it was a generation ago, by the arrival at the school of Slytherin's direct descendent. Suspicion falls on Harry, especially when he reveals a sinister ability to talk to snakes. In a remote bathroom the friends meet the ghost Moaning Myrtle, a one-time Hogwarts student. There they cook up a potion to transform themselves into friends of fellow student Draco Malfoy, whom they wrongly suspect of either being or knowing who is Slytherin's heir. Later Hermione is petrified. Harry finds a magic diary of a former student called Tom Riddle. By 'entering' it, Harry learns how the school caretaker Hagrid was accused of opening the Chamber of Secrets when he was a student at Hogwarts and expelled. In the present, Hagrid is arrested and the headmaster Dumbledore relieved of his post. Harry and Ron discover that the monster Hagrid hid years ago was really a giant spider Aragog who now lives in the woods. Eventually Harry and Ron deduce that Myrtle was killed by the chamber's monster, a massive basilisk (snake). The basilisk has captured Ron's little sister Ginny. Accompanied by conceited but ineffectual Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart, they enter the chamber via the bathroom. There Harry meets Tom Riddle, who turns out to be Voldernort, the evil wizard who tried to kill Harry as a baby and is the heir of Slytherin. Harry defeats Voldemort, slays the basilisk and rescues Ginny. The petrified people are restored to normal, Dumbledore reinstated and Hagrid cleared. Harry tricks Dobby's owner, Draco's father Lucius (who planted the diary), into freeing Dobby.

You could have many gripes about the two Harry Potter movies made so far, but you could never accuse them of being unfaithful to the books. Following slavishly close to its (.K. Rowling source novel, each film has clocked in at a demanding two hours plus, proving, if nothing else, that younger audience members will sit still for that long provided you give them plenty of what they want. Which, in this case, seems to be a steady supply of digital monsters and snowy owls, magic candles and shifting staircases, threaded together by a hero so wholesome he makes Prince William look like Harmony Korine. Both books and films offer Nancy Drew/Hardy Brothers meets Scooby-Doo style mysteries, unfolding in a world part magical fantasy, part St Trinians, all jolly broomsticks and wizard adventures.

As was the case last year, this Harry Potter movie is up against the latest Lord of the Rings venture at the box office. The makers of each franchise know they're aiming for a demographic that overlaps but is not identical. Harry gets younger children and more women; Rings older kids and mainly boys. Nonetheless, one has the sense that the competition has forced the makers of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to keep up their game.

They're lucky that The Chamber of Secrets is a better book. Less burdened with backstory explication, the film plunges right into an incident-dense plot (possibly a little confusing for those who haven't read the novel). Endowed with a richer cast of supporting characters, it affords an opportunity for such character actors as Kenneth Branagh (as a preening but inept schoolmaster, all daytime-TV smarm) and Shirley Henderson (as a passive-aggressive ghost with a voice that ranges from twitter to air-raid siren) to let rip. As in the book, the narrative takes steps to temper the privileged smugness of the boarding-school setting by introducing a PC subplot that condemns racism against human-born wizards. Indeed, although all the main characters are white, the baddies have an Aryan blondness, while there's a fair smattering of other ethnicities among the walk-on goodies. (Harry has a budding romance with an Asian girl in later books.)

Where the next, slightly bigger-budgeted Rings is likely to better this Potter is in the effects stakes, although younger audience members aren't likely to care much. The ropey-looking CGI monsters from the first film are smoother and more nuanced here, though there's still something cold about such creatures. The house elf Dobby, for instance, has well-animated facial expressions but his movements are too studied and liquid-like. He might have been more endearingly tactile if someone as talented as the late Jim Henson had jimmied the creature together from rubberised cloth and glass eyes, like Yoda in the early days of Star Wars. By contrast some of the children's performances might have been better rendered by pixels. Director Chris Columbus came to the series with a reputation for working well with child actors (Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire) but the poor performances of the first film are barely improved on here. One looks forward to seeing whether Alfonso Cuarón can work his magic with the next movie.

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