less comedic, more horrific

Rating: 9/10 (6 June 2004)

One thing that is immediately noticeable after the end of this third movie is that you just watched a movie with much less comedy in it. That's neither good nor bad, just different. Hope the kids don't get too scared.

A lot of stuff has been edited down to the bare minimum. One of the highlights of a Harry Potter movie is the Quidich match. In this one it is almost non-existent, none of the usual taunting that goes on between players on the opposite teams, etc. Just a very short scene concentrating on just the highlight battle of this match. Also a lot of the main supporting characters in the movie, the teachers, have much smaller roles here than before, such as Maggie Smith (Prof. McGonagall), and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid). Oh well, you can't always have every character show up all of the time.
One highlight was the new Prof. Dumbledore, played this time by Michael Gambon. Gambon took over this role after the late Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore in the first two movies. Harris played Dumbledore like a kindly old grandfather. Gambon seems to play him more like a mischievous uncle. Different, yet still good.
I think they did an excellent job with the time travel sequence at the end of the movie. I won't let too much more about it out, but they kept it very believable and consistent.