Overly dramatic, the latest Potter flick fails because of direction

Rating: 6/10 (5 June 2004)

From the get-go, it's clear that the latest Harry Potter film was directed by someone else. Unlike the first two, which do their damnedest to mimic Rawling's magical and slightly whimsical portrayal of the world she creates, Cuaron's interpretation focuses on a much darker element that is barely evident in the story. Aside from a few forced jokes, there is very little whimsy in his take on the book, which is a travesty.
One of the clearest problems in Cuaron's direction is the overly fluid way in which he moves the film. There are no stepping stones or key events which really stick with the viewer. Instead, he spends a good chunk of the movie showing the passage of time, which is just downright silly. This changes a bit in the last twenty minutes, but by that point I just wanted the film to end already...it had run its course. I didn't care about the characters because, apart from a few choice lines by Emma Watson, there was very little depth to the characters -- they were devices to move a simplified plot.
Apart from pacing, Cuaron also flops in his misunderstanding of the material he has to work with. Though he may have taken the song from Macbeth, I have a feeling Cuaron felt he was dealing with something more akin to Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes". This is just not the case. The Harry Potter books, even as the story becomes darker, just do not have that dark, haunting tone. Between the music (say it isn't so, John Williams!), the darkened visuals, and the over-use of the grim reaper characters, he tries to infuse Rawling's tale with something that just isn't there, turning a story which is very clearly made for kids into something that is clearly not aimed at children but far beneath what any adult moviegoer would have any desire to see. It's an unnecessary seriousness that just doesn't work. If you've seen Y Tu Mama Tambien, however, you shouldn't really be all that surprised, for there, too, he tried to make something out of nothing (or rather, too much out of not much, since he had three separate themes that diluted each other).
Hopefully the return of a less serious director (Mike Newell) will set the Harry Potter series back on course. As much as J.K. Rawling would like to take herself seriously, these are still just kids books -- Cuaron should have recognized that.