It's meaner, it's darker...but is it better?- SPOILERS

Rating: 6/10 (1 June 2004)

After a lovely hour queuing together with three year olds on sugar high,
yesterday I have seen Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. As this is the movie version of my favourite of the HP books so far, I had great expectations and couldn't wait to finally see it...So what's it like? I think it's one of the most frustrating movie I have ever seen!!! The fact that it is extraordinarily good in some things, and terribly bad in others made me feel a bit strange all the way through. I'll explain... On the production side, the movie is a gem: dark, stark and un-disneyish. Also the actors have improved and the new characters are quite impressively played by the likes of David Thewlis, Gary Oldman and Emma Thompson. Also, the
underlying moods of the movie have "grown up" since its predecessors. I have
enjoyed how the director plays with themes such as time (a strong element in
the whole HP series, related to Harry growing up, his past and his future) and Harry's perception of himself. BUT these great features are undermined by the huge cuts that the book
suffered when transposed to screenplay, mostly at the expense of character
development and tension build-up...Watching the movie you realise the climax
of the story has arrived and you have kind of missed how you got there!!! Also, the cuts mean that the audience never gets to hear why Snape hates Lupin and
Black so much, who the hell Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are, how
does Lupin know that the Marauder map is indeed a map, why Harry is so
obsessed by his fate and by dark omens, why cats, rats and dogs don't like each other, why Professor Trelawney prediction is so important, etc etc etc...I'll stop here! There's quite a lot left out, clearly, and sometimes I wondered if people who haven't read the book could actually understand what was going on. With the movie being so good in other respects, it's frustrating to see the story butchered and the characters thinned so much...The scene with Snape (Alan
Rickman is excellent...wish there was more of him), Lupin and Sirius in the
Shrieking Shack is so bloody brilliant that you wish it didn't last only 30 seconds, but that it were faithful to the book! You only get to see a spark of the hatred, recriminations and deceit that run among them...But then again, you only about this if you've read the book... So, in conclusion, go and see the movie for some good moments and for finally seeing some of your fantasies of POA represented on screen (Hogsmeade,
Buckbeak, the Marauders Map)...But for story, pathos and great
characters...Stick to the book!!!