Prisoner break's free of commercialized plots - Spoilers -

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2004)

Having been much disappointed by the deviations from the Harry Potter book series by the first two films, all was redeemed with "The Prisoner of Azkaban". The movies-for-commercialism's sake had driven the story lines in a non-Potter direction, but they find the road again with this latest edition.
Rarely is a book-to-movie transition ever satisfaction for the readers themselves (just watch any Stephen King movie), but aside from The Lord of The Rings, "Prisoner" is as good as it gets. Fitting the 435-pages of Rowling's creativity and masterfully-created characters and plots into a 2:22-minute film is no small task, but it is so well done that I can walk away feeling that the non-readers could enjoy the true Harry Potter experience.
From the first films' "Harry Potter, Boy Hero" feel, the "Prisoner" shows more of the true Harry Potter, in the darker and more sinister world for which he lives. Not merely reduced to the boiler-plate "Boy overcomes odds to save the day", but more of a "Boy lives a tormented and difficult life and has to do all he can to survive".
The happy, overly-goofy Harry Potter cinema world comes crashing down on screen with "Prisoner".
The Sirius Black wanted posters and dark, stormy train sequence with the Dementors set the tone of the movie quickly. The Dementor scenes, the shrieking shack, the Marauder's Map, a hilarious Trelawny, Lupin's werewolf transition and the hilarious Dark Arts lesson with the Boggart made the movie as spectacular as the book was to read.
It has been a few years since I've read "The Prisoner of Azkaban", and I had forgotten some of the fine points in the 'turn-back-time' sequence in the end. The movie did a surprising and superb job with this sequence; for example...The breaking of the vase in Hagrid's house and the rock hitting the back of Harry's head - later we see that this was thrown by the future Hermione.
From my experience with the first two movies, I kept waiting for the disappointing and gratuitous ending, but the movie 'kept it real' all the way through.
My one disappointment on behalf of the non-readers is the whole Animagus theme. The names Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, & Prongs are shown on the Marauder's Map, but no reference to James Potter being the animagus Stag, or any relation of the Map to Lupin (Moony), Pettigrew (Wormtail), Sirius (Padfoot) or Potter is given. I felt that this could have been easily and quickly done in the movie, and that result is that the non-readers have no idea why Harry's Patronous was in the shape of the Stag. Rowling did such a clever job of revealing the meaning of the map names and origin in the book.
The movie is definitely worth seeing, and I give it the five stars that it deserves!