Excellent family film

Rating: Null/10 (4 June 2004)

And to think I once hated the whole Harry Potter phenomenon.
I hated how I couldn't turn around without seeing something Potter-related. Mugs, t-shirts, soft drinks, posters, you name it. I made the pompous mistake that most people make about Stephen King: popular equals bad.
Of course, I hadn't read the books. I didn't need to. It had to be bad; look at how many people love it. I then saw `Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,' and murmured a five-star review about how it was one of the best children's films ever made, hoping no one would notice the change of heart, and not point out my pretentions (they did).
Now comes `Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,' the third film in the series. It comes with a new director, Alfonso Cuarón, the man behind the infinitely different film `Y Tu Mama Tambien,' which was also about growing lads, but had more sex and booze than the Hogwarts rulebooks would allow. A year has passed since the last film ended, and the kids have grown up a bit (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint being the leads). Soon Harry will have to find out how to perform the magical art of shaving.
This is the darkest of the stories filmed so far, and has an altogether less jolly feel (but you already know that from all the other reviews). A prisoner of Azkaban prison, Sirius Black, has escaped and is looking for Harry (we find out that he was a spy for the villain of the series, Voldermort). With Harry gone, Voldermort can take over again, and that can't be good, so Harry takes it upon himself to get Sirius before Sirius gets him.
There are, of course, twists in the tale that you'll either know or will have to find out. I can say that, knowing the story, I was not disappointed: as always, the images on the screen did not match the ones in my head, but I didn't care. The film is exhilarating, and stands up easily beside the first two.
And yet it's different. The whole film is just less colourful than the first two. Literally. There is an early shot in the Great Hall, and it looked almost sepia. Very young viewers will probably find it more frightening than the earlier ones, what with those scary Dementors, who surround the school to protect it from Sirius Black, and will suck your soul out if you get on their bad side. They look a bit like cousins of the Ring Wraiths from the `Lord of the Rings' films.
If you don't know much about Harry Potter, you won't have a clue what I'm talking about. I'd advise you to see the other movies first: you can watch the second before the first, as I did, but I think you'd feel a smidgen confused by this one if you went in with a blank slate. Many characters from the earlier films (Maggie Smith's Jean Brodie-esque Professor McGonagall, Headmaster Dumbeldore, now played by Michael Gambon, who is given fortune-cookie-philosophy dialogue that he manages to sell with ease) are given less screen time, although Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) is still striding about, and, as nasty-but-fun characters go, he's still up there with Hannibal Lecter.
To make up for it, however, a lot of new characters are introduced. Emma Thompson plays the eccentric Professor Trelawny, who teaches Divination (reading tea leaves, predicting deaths etc.), and Gary Oldman plays Sirius Black with a slightly manic edge. That invaluable British actor Timothy Spall also has a small part, and David Thewlis plays the new Dark Arts teacher, who has a few dark secrets himself. If there's one thing these movies get right, it's casting.
This film is, as I said before, tinged with a certain melancholy, right from the start. It has many moments of humour, certainly. My favourite was when the children had to defend themselves from the things they fear most by turning them into things that they laugh at, and seeing Alan Rickman in drag is a sight I will not quickly forget (to achieve this, by the way, you just flick your wand and say ridikulus'). But there is also that Quidditch match in the rain with the Dementors circling ominously overhead, and the werewolf, and the execution of the Hippogriff, which is a majestic creature somewhere between a horse and an eagle.
It's also perhaps worth noting that this film is 142 minutes in length, which may seem quite long, but it's actually the shortest of the films yet made, despite being based on the longest book. It's tighter than the first too, and maybe just a little too tight. Cuarón gets in moments of wit, fun characters and even a sequence with a certain beauty to it (when Harry rides the Hippogriff), but perhaps it is just that little bit too story-driven. It unfolds as well as any great story, but when I am in Hogwarts, I don't like to be rushed along.
But I am nit-picking. The film is excellent, perhaps not as fun as the second one, but just as exciting. This film is definitely taking a slightly different path from the earlier ones, but that's probably a blessing. I saw J.K. Rowling on television the other day saying how this is Alfonso's baby.' Odd, for a writer to give her story totally to a director and let him do with it what he pleases. I admire her for it; it means the stories are alive and evolving under different hands.
I love the way this series fills the whole canvas with details (just look at those portraits on the walls), and its ability to make even me, a cynical teenager, believe in the characters. They fly off on broomsticks, and battle with wands, and get involved in a fight with a tree (yes, a tree) yet it never feels as ridikulus as it sounds.
****½ (out of 5)