Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban
Originally published at The Phoenix Nest. You can comment here or there.
Meh.
It captured the tone of the book quite well, being much darker than the first 2 movies, and Lupin was very well cast, but other than that, well, meh.
Hermione is still being made to look too pretty. It’s supposed to be a shock when she looks good for the ball in Goblet of Fire.
I thought Gary Oldman was a good casting choice for Sirius, unfortunately, the role was overplayed. Sirius is not a raving loon!
Far too many significant plot points were forgotten about. Trelawney’s prophecy is somewhat significant, as it’s only her second genuine prophecy, and both concerned Harry & Voldemort. A bit of dialogue to explain that would have been nice. They also missed out the ending, with Pettigrew going back to Voldemort, which is another significant point for later films.
All in all, the director was frankly, incompetant. The film could have been another 30 minutes longer, and would have been a much better film for it. As it was, it’s the shortest film adaptation, yet of the three, it’s the longest book. Go figure. What little we see of Michael Gambon as Dumbledore leads me to believe that he was a good choice to replace Richard Harris.
This film was not made with any thought about fitting in the rest of the series. Hell, by redesigning Hogwarts grounds, it doesn’t even fit in with the existing movies. Given that it was largely the same production team, and the same scriptwriter, I can only assume that this degree of gross incompetance comes from the director. Thank heavens they’ve got someone else for Goblet of Fire…