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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Customer Reviews (49 - 51 of 104 Reviews)

"Not good...Brilliant!"
Though many accuse Alfonso Cuaron of "royally screwing" this film up, I for one agree with JK Rowling: It is my personal favorite of the three films thus far. While Cuaron does make several changes to the story, none of them harm it in the least. In fact, Rowling commented in one interview that she wished that she had invented the shrunken heads first! That aside, the actors continue to amaze, especially the trio (Harry, Ron, and Hermione). They are maturing with each film, and it is apparent. This film is much darker, so it would be wise for parents to see it first, but for everyone over the age of 12 it is an excellent and exciting ride. Mischief Managed!

They are rushing these movies into production
I won't repeat what everyone else says here in the negative reviews, with much of which I agree, expecially about scene selection. I'll just say that I wasn't expecting to be incredibly impressed, I had already read the book several times and I thought the scenes which they chose to transfer to film were fairly well acted and the spirit of the book was fairly well captured. I think the overarching difficulty with these HP movies is that they're rushing them into production to ride the initial hype.

Let's face it - there weren't any studios back in the 40's that were breaking down doors to sign deals to film Tolkien's work which was being written at the time. Then feeble attempts were made by animators to capture the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one regular-length animated feature. Not until Peter Jackson recently spent years producing 9.5 or so hours worth of screen time had justice been done to the popular fantasy.

But they are rushing these movies into production, producing them virtually simultaneously with the writing of the books. The Harry Potter series has arguably more character development and dialogue than Lord of the Rings and thus requires more meticulous attention to scene selection to fit in to an average length movie. In a story like POA the film-makers are necessarily going to leave out huge gaps either in the class time, the Quidditch scenes or the long amounts of dialogue at the climax when they discover the true identity of Pettigrew and Black. This last part is the one I feel suffers the most although I think the time-turner experience is very well done.

They simply have too much material to translate with "Prisoner of Azkaban" and it's only going to get harder with the next 2 films. Personally I would have enjoyed POA broken into 2 films much better or even a 3 hour movie, but that would be a harder sell for sure, especially for a "kid's movie".

A Brutally Honest Crtique
This new chronicle in the Harry Potter sequence is nowhere near worthy of the rosy ratings of most reviews because of two simple reasons.

The first of these is the acting. I feel that the actors preformed their parts well, but I have several major qualms with the new director, Alfonso Cuaron, about his choices for the portrayal of the characters. The first major flop was Dumbledore. The actor played the part well, and retained the look and sound of the old Dumbledore, but the lines and intonation were appalling. The literary purpose of Dumbledore is as a source of safety and comfort for Harry, but this movie lost all of that. The primary problem was that Dumbledore lost all of his appeal to the audience because he no longer retains that indelible Dumbledore quality of warmth. He was brisk, snappish, and terse in his addresses to the students, and this is a serious departure from the caring and deep Dumbledore we met in the first two movies. The theatrical lighting also enhanced this new image: the first two movies had a great deal of yellow and orange light, while the color swatch for this was more toward the cooler colors such as blue. The other acting difficulty is apparent by even looking at a poster for the movie; Harry is no longer the central character. After seeing this film, I came away with the impression that Hermione had achieved dominance in the film titled Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This is but one of the two major reasons that this movie is barely worthy of two stars out of five.

The other reason that this movie disappoints me is the content. While I have to admit that all of the sequences shown in the movie were very good, it is what is not shown that is the most distressing. The Harry Potter books have a unique charm resulting from Rowling's phenomenal ability to characterize, the intense reality of the world she weaves, and her ability to build a plot rich with intrigues out of minor supporting details. And her characterizations often occur alongside her sublime plot details, which only add to her skill as a writer. But this movie only barely manages to capture the world she wrought in The Prisoner of Azkaban, and loses the plot entirely. Too many things were left out, many of which left viewers puzzled. For example, when Lupin revealed to Potter that he knew how to use the Marauder's Map, none of the characters batted an eyelash. Moreover, the entire subplot about Harry's father was omitted; this included who "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, Prongs" were, the fact that they were all Animagi, or wizards who can transform into animals, or why Harry's patronus was a stag. I feel that this is likely connected to Harry no longer being a central character in the movie bearing his name. Overall, I feel that this movie strays dangerously close to what Christopher Coloumbus alluded to wanting to do with the Harry Potter series, take all the action sequences from all the books, and combine them into a single movie.

In conclusion, I feel that this film seriously undermines the characters and mutilates the plot. By changing the character focus and leaving out central story elements, this movie not only poorly portrays this book, but also changes things so considerably that it will be a huge hurdle to recover from these blunders in the Harry Potter movies to come.

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