Leaner & faster version. Review on Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban Movie

I was inside the theatre a good 2 hours before the scheduled movie start. First let me tell you, I am a great fan of Harry Potter stories. So, naturally, I was eagerly waiting for the movie to start. And also this 3rd part of the movie is important because this is the first book in the series that talks a lot about Harry's past (lot of his parents friends are introduced in this book).

But, as soon as the movie reached the scene where Harry's Uncle Mr.Vernon came upstairs to check on Harry, I was feeling a big disappointment.

Probably, this is because of my high expectations regarding seeing one of my favorite stories on screen, but I'd certainly blame it on the Director/screen-writer's part. Such a famous story, which has such a big fan-club, certainly deserves more screen time.

The scenes whizzed past. Suddenly I found myself staring at Harry in the Leaky Cauldron talking to the minister of magic.

''Hey, hold on a second, aren't we missing a lot?” was my initial reaction.

''Ok, probably they thought the climax part of this story is what is important and have made it big (read, lengthy!!) and enjoyable'', I told myself.

I loved watching the dementors in flesh (ah, I mean, on screen). Then came Prof Lupin, getting rid of the dementor with a simple (!?) patronom spell.

''Ooh, good stuff'', I thought. By then, I was kind of glued to the fast paced screen play, even though the second thread running inside me kept on pointing to me the (so many interesting) missed scenes from the story. But, I was disappointed again when I didn't see Madam Pomfrey telling Harry ''at last, hogwarts has got a Defence & DarkArts teacher who really knows his stuff''. When reading the story, this simple statement reinforced in me the point that Prof. Lupin is really a great wizard (not someone like Pettigrew!) and not some show-off like Gilderoy Lockheart. I guess, in the movie, this really was needed as part of building the Lupin character.

Then we get to see the Hogwarts, in its full glory, again. Harry & co take up many new subjects -- Divination, Ancient Runes(only Hemione) etc. I liked Emma Thompson as Prof. Trelawney. Good character selection.

Also, the suspense that was created with the big-black dog in the book, is missing in the movie. The Dog (actually, Sirius himself) looked more like what I could find in my street rather than an animagus form of one of the powerful wizards!

The Bogart scenes were good. The conversation between Lupin/Harry looked, at many places, very artificial. Probably, Cuaron just wanted to show the ''I-haven't-read-the-book-before'' viewers how much Lupin loved Harry.

Then came my favorite part of the story -- Sirius Black’s coming in to Hogwarts. Though, the terror the Hogwarts in-mates should be feeling was not portrayed well, from that point onwards till the end of the film, the screen-play was lean & so fast that even my second-thread could not keep up in pointing out the mistakes and eventually I was able to totally shut it down so I could watch the movie as it is and not as what I expected :)

The climax was one of the best done, visually. No confusion at all in showing the time-turner & how it was used. (Even, the first-time viewers will not be scratching their heads). The scenes inside the shrieking shack were also well done, though again Cuaron decided to skip showing a lot of spells :( The Pettigrew character…ooh..I wonder how this farce is going to help Voldermart in the fifth book.

While Cuaron (Director) has done a great job in making this movie leaner, meaner with a visually appealing climax, there is no arguing that this is a more condensed Harry Potter film. The narrative is also slightly jerky. People who watch Harry Potter for the first time (with out even reading the books) will find it hard to follow this film.

I prefer Chris Columbus's previous two editions of Harry Potter, even though those movies had bloated (not for me!!) running times. I liked Chris's approach of staying faithful to the books at the expense of any cinematic personality over the choppy story telling approach took up by Cuaron.

Does that mean, I didn't like this movie?? NO ! I loved it & is a great movie, but it simply is not meant for fans like me, who wants to see every detail in the book on screen.