Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (PG): Scarier, more exciting and with a better plot, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is, happily, a much better film than the first one.

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter and Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

At more than two-and-a-half hours, it's long, but the time passes quickly. Kenneth Brannagh aka Gilderoy Flockhart, the teacher of defence against the dark arts is funnier than we've seen him in a long time as a cowardly, vain, goldi-locked winner of the charming smile award.

The children, seem less precocious and more sure of themselves as actors, which means they are able to conjure up more than the painful stock expressions they used in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Richard Harris, who gives one of his last performances as a wise and thoughtful Dumbledore, head of Hogwarts School, also adds weight and poignance.

Harry (a mature Daniel Radcliffe, who has left his boyhood soprano far behind) arrives at Hogwarts, despite the best efforts of a mischievous elf who tries to keep him away.

He soon finds the school has a chamber of secrets and more than that, the chamber has been opened by an age-old evil which has come to claim the lives of all mud-bloods and muggle-born those who are not of pure wizard lineage.

Harry has to discover why he can understand and speak parsel tongue, the language of snakes and of the basilisk, the chamber's secret monster. Oh, and he also has to destroy the monster.

He manages to deal with this, and other disturbing issues such as the demonic possession of a young girl, with a cheerful grin and a gutsy attitude that seems to stand him in better stead than his potential for casting magic spells.

And there you have it. Children will jump, and some adults may even be left with images of immense spiders imprinted on their minds. But everyone will enjoy watching Harry combat evil with his plucky attitude.

And for those who were disappointed by Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, believe the hype: what with high-speed quidditch, powerful potions and an intricate plot, this one is worth watching.