Tuesday July 06, 2004

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Let's get the fine print out of the way first. Same caveats as before: no, it's not really in my DVD player, and yes, I'm pretty Scroogy when it comes to giving five stars to a flick. I'm a softer touch when it comes to music and books, or perhaps, since I spend so much more time with them (over the long run) than I do with a movie, the only ones I keep -- and bother to comment on -- are the really good ones. Movies, on the other hand, are as likely to rot as not, and so their marks fall on a more normal distribution: the five star ones are way up the end of the bell curve.

This one came close to five stars. Mighty close.

The first really good thing about it is that the treacle of the first two movies is gone. I appreciated Chris Columbus's loving attention to the details of the books, and he gets great credit for bringing them to the screen almost word for word. But for movies about magic, they were -- to me -- surprisingly unmagical. I would sit through them appreciating them, respecting them even, but not enjoying them.

This one, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, I loved. The plot was a cut above the first two (obviously J. K. Rowling gets the credit here), the new actors -- Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, David Thewlis as Professor Lupin, and (one of my all-time favorites) Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney -- were spectacular, and the feel of the movie was much more interesting, much richer (if, again, less sweet) than that of the first two. Case in point: the mercifully brief Quidditch scene takes place in a driving rain, and there's no mention whatsoever of the House Cup. The three main actors, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, have grown in both stature and talent. Robbie Coltrane is and has always been pitch perfect as Hagrid, as are Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman as Professors McGonagall and Snape; and Michael Gambon, having even bigger shoes to fill than Hagrid's, does so admirably, though I miss the late Richard Harris's Dumbledore dearly.

The Marauder's Map is my favorite magical object to date, though I wish they'd spent just a few minutes tracing its history, and that of its creators, "Messrs. Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs", as I believe it would have enriched the plot of this movie, and (one would think) the next one. And I would have enjoyed a more lingering tour of Hogsmead. Me, I intend to visit the bar, the candy store, and the joke shop, my next trip across the pond.

In other words, even though the movie weighed in at 2 hours and 21 minutes as is, I would have gladly spent another 40 minutes with it. Perhaps, like Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings, they'll release an extended version on DVD.

That one, I guarantee you, would be in my DVD player.

[GET IT]

(2004-07-06 18:35:21.0) Permalink