Film is the Knight Bus

Rating: 6/10 (4 June 2004)

I was disappointed with this film. Caught up in the Potter excitement, I stayed up to watch the 12:01 am premier, only to find that the whole feeling of the movie was like the Knight's Bus. That is - the movie moved swiftly, allowing for brief passing glimpses of the story, all in order to get to the destination (the scene with Sirius, Pettigrew, Lupin, et. al). While I think the visuals were MUCH better than the previous two, I don't see how anyone who hasn't read the novels could even begin to comprehend the story. I understand that Cuarón felt he didn't need to explain things as it was in the first two movies, I felt no connection with Lupin or Sirius, and felt that the other well established characters were caricatures, not developing individuals. This is not to say that the acting was bad. I think everyone did a fine job, there was just too much emphasis on hitting certain plot points along the way to the climax. My husband described it as picking certain pages from the book and throwing them on the screen, with no previous or following pages to help you understand the significance. Perhaps fewer individual scenes would have been appropriate in order to develop the storyline.