A more adult Harry Potter movie.

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2004)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban went on general release in the UK yesterday and I caught a late-night showing.
This movie is a phenomenal addition to the series, very much darker both figuratively and literally, the child actors are really developing nicely (Grint, for example, is far better than he was in Chamber of Secrets) and director Cuaron put in lots of little visual touches that wouldn't have occurred to Chris Columbus in a million years.
One strange thing is that the entire geography of Hogwarts has entirely changed. Both Hagrid's cottage and the Whomping Willow are in totally different places from the previous movie. However, this is not to denigrate the art direction which seems to be better than ever. One major addition to the general set is the workings of the giant Hogwarts Clock, used as a backdrop or for fly-through again and again, to great effect. Also notable is the bridge from the castle to Hagrid's cottage, a fine example of distressed woodwork.
Atmospherically the movie is almost totally different from its predecessors. The colours are muted and the sky is always overcast, actually sometimes to a fault - the emotional involvement one should have felt when Harry was first riding Buckbeak was muted by the gunmetal tones of the landscape he was flying over. Beautiful indeed, but not in a "children's fantasy film" way. This is a quibble. Really the style absolutely suited the much darker ways of the plot. The Quidditch match, which takes place, as in the book, in a driving rainstorm, is an absolute tour-de-force of terror without the gimmicky camera-work prevalent in the first two films. The Dementors, in particular, are extremely well handled and are the backbone, to me, to what I found the most terrifying sequences in the whole Harry Potter saga so far. However, there are also fun parts - particularly the Knight Bus, beautifully translated from the description of Harry's nightmare journey in the book, and a brilliant piece of design in the bus itself.
The book is followed almost too faithfully, resulting in little for the much-anticipated Gary Oldman to do as the mad, bad and dangerous to know Sirius Black. But David Thewlis very effectively fills in the void as Lupin. Michael Gambon has stepped so seamlessly into Richard Harris's shoes as Dumbledore that I never remotely thought of comparing their performances. Gambon is no less Dumbledore than Harris was ... in fact he might be a little better.
One does hope, however, that when the DVD comes out, they make an "Extended Edition" rather than put the deleted scenes in a separate section as they have hitherto. In the released film it is all too evident, on occasion, where cuts have been made.