Disappointing for HP fans... confusing for others - some spoilers

Rating: 5/10 (6 June 2004)

I'm going to cut to the chase and save all those who know the demographics and story from hearing what they already know.
Now I wasn't impressed with the first 2 films and was a bit annoyed with Chris Columbus as a director, but at least those 2 movies left me satisfied. Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite book and perhaps that's why I'm taking this movie to heart, but honestly the mistakes made in this film are so annoying that even if I hadn't had high hopes, I'd be let down.
Some good things! I love how the characters have grown and how the actors have begun to mature. There are powerful scenes in this movie and lots of good laughs (added by the way). I even found myself smiling at a couple bits like the budding "relationship" between Ron and Hermoine and a funny scene in which Ron wakes up from a nightmare about spiders. The scenery is very different, but nice. It may be extremely hard to follow where they are and what's going on at time because of different sets. Two main things I am very pleased with are the dementors and the scene with Buckbeak the hippogriff. The dementors do seem to "suck" happiness from you and swarm you when it's least convenient. The scene with Buckbeak was nearly perfect. It was very close to how it's described in the book and it's one of the scenes that just blow you away, maybe because of the visuals.
However, all these fun and beautiful elements hardly surpass the bad. The film felt so rushed and kept jumping from scene to scene so abruptly that if you hadn't read the book you'd be lost. It'd look like these random bits being thrown together. A couple things occur and non-HP readers wouldn't know why. Such as who Moody, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs are and why Lupin magically knows how to use the map when Snape doesn't. They would also be confused as to what happened to Trewlawney. The movie never explains what happened or why. It's all just too rushed and confusing. I having read the book countless times even found myself thinking "Ok, now what part is this? What's going on?". Even if one had seen the previous movies and not read the books it's like "Where'd this cat come from?" and you barely have time to register what a Grim is, what it looks like, and connect the dots. The dialogue is so quick that I could barely catch what was being said half the time! In my opinion this was is simply poorly done. I would still watch it though due to the fact that, hey, it's Harry Potter! If you must calm your curiousity then go see it. Otherwise it can wait till DVD.