Shouldn't be held prisoner

Rating: 7/10 (25 January 2010)

I've been watching the Harry Potter movies despite being the one person in society who hasn't read the books, and I've been enjoying them. The series got a new director for "The Prisoner of Azkaban," and that's immediately apparent not just from the name on the credits but from a noticeably different stylistic feel. As a consequence, the strengths and weaknesses of the third film are balanced a little differently from those of the first two. One of the most immediately arresting, memorable, and commendable things about "The Prisoner of Azkaban" is the extraordinarily imaginative and well-realized visual style, far outpacing the already-impressive first two films. It's packed with stunningly-created sights such as the aunt who is blown up like a balloon, talking shrunken heads, crooked offices, and rather haunting moving mugshots on the newspapers. I even loved little touches such as the addition of a uniform number and realistic-looking sports equipment to the quiddich game. I don't know how much of this stuff was described is prose form by J. K. Rowling and how much was created for this film, but I'm hugely impressed: I feel as if I could pause the film at any shot and spend fifteen minutes examining the background.
I also appreciated Alonso Cuaron's approach to handling scenes. There was a little bit more down-to-Earth realism cutting through people's interactions in the magical world in the film, and I appreciated that. Again, little touches such as Harry Potter's reactions to his uncle's family's obnoxiousness, the very authentically middle-school was Draco Malfoy and friends circle round to gang up on the heroes, and little offhand indications of running jokes between characters that we now know have known each other for a while ("How is it she knows everything?") make a big difference. There is a strong strain of dark humor running through this particular film, casting special light on officialdom's obliviousness to the fact that Harry Potter might want to know there's a convicted murderer chasing him down, and I appreciate it. Character-wise, the leads are growing up enough to get some more satisfying development, and Harry Potter himself especially is becoming a very rounded character with a stubborn, anti-establishment streak that I enjoy. Due to a sad death among the cast Michael Gambon is called upon as a replacement -- he avoids imitation and is as excellent as ever.
In many senses, then, I found this film superior -- but unfortunately the way its plot is handled felt a little unsatisfactory to me. After a certain point where a major twist occurs involving how we perceive one of the characters, a number of things start failing to make sense to me or to be explained. I think issues of what actually happened between Pettigrew, Black, Lupis, and Harry Potter's father are only hinted at here, with the expectation that fans already understand them. What's more, they are sprung upon us very quickly without much of a lead-in. In all I found this stylistically a joy and far ahead of it predecessors, which were no slouches, but the muddled plot line mitigates that somewhat.