Hardly the best Harry Potter but still great to see it back in the cinemas

It’s the music as much as anything. Just those opening bars, and a couple of decades melt away, taking you straight back into one of the most innovative, engrossing and satisfying of film franchises ever.

In this particular instance, it’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, that rather overlooked, rather forgotten (justifiably so to an extent) second episode, re-released on the big screen for its 20th anniversary.

Ominously scribbled on the walls are the words "The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened. Enemies of the Heir, Beware.” Inevitably it’s down to Harry, Ron and Hermione to sort it all out – once, of course, Harry has had his customary clash with Richard Griffiths’ Uncle Vernon right at the start. Then just to vary things a little, Harry and Ron make a rather different entrance to Hogwarts this time, courtesy of Ron’s dad’s Ford Anglia. It’s a lavish, extraordinary world, and it’s great to find a reason to go back there.

It’s terribly difficult to imagine ever wanting to get a Harry Potter DVD out these days – and maybe this is why. It’s on the big screen and in a cinema full of people that Harry truly comes alive. Anything else just doesn’t come close. In truth, Harry Potter II was never the greatest. It never quite captured the wonder of the opening film in the series; it never quite equalled the sheer scale of its imagination. Harry Potter II is simply the film which keeps it all going, simply the continuation until things really hot up in films four and five. But it has still got plenty going for it, not least Kenneth Branagh’s brilliance as the preening, self-obsessed, utterly cowardly but still pricelessly funny Gilderoy Lockhart, epitome of vainglorious self-promotion and the new defence against the dark arts teacher.

It’s a wonderful creation, superbly delivered by Branagh – and in retrospect all these years later, you can’t help thinking ah, so this is partly where Hugh Grant’s fabulous Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington II came from. Against that, in Chamber of Secrets we’ve got the double irritations of Dobbie and Moaning Myrtle, equally annoying the pair of them – plus a Ron Weasley from Rupert Grint who’s starting to get just a little mannered. We see that whimpering expression of terror far far too often by the end of it. He’s getting just a little monotonous in a way Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry doesn’t (he’s starting to flourish) and in a way Emma Watson’s Hermione couldn’t possibly (she’s by now streets ahead as the most natural and watchable of the three).

Part also of the pleasure of Harry Potter II are the fond memories it evokes of the great names we have lost. Alan Rickman’s Snape barely appears in this one, but there is power in the character, possibly the most intriguing character of the entire series; we’ve also still got Richard Harris as Dumbledore, the best Dumbledore, the truest Dumbledore. And saddest of all right now we’ve also got Robbie Coltrane getting into his stride as gamekeeper Hagrid, still with so much more to deliver in the films yet to come.

Harry Potter II is far from the best in the series, but it’s a glorious reminder of the great talents which went into it – and will certainly keep us going until the better films in the series reach their 20th anniversaries.