Some comments on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with a friend yesterday. The interesting thing is how different our reactions were. I was thoroughly spoiled from reading online reviews and the Harry Potter mailing lists I subscribe to. She has read the books for times but is not part of the online Harry Potter community at all.

I knew the movie was very different from the book. She didn’t and it kept surprising her. She must have whispered “that wasn’t in the book” at least a dozen times through the course of the film and told me at the end that she just didn’t enjoy it as much as the first two films. I, on the other hand, liked Prisoner of Azkaban a great deal though I think it had a great many flaws as well.

Some of my observations/comments on the film in no particular order (warning – spoilers ahead):

• I liked how Harry, Hermione and Ron were portrayed. I definitely enjoyed Hermione slugging Draco Malfoy but otherwise thought that Draco was definitely out-of-character from the books.
  Remus and Sirius were not how I had imagined them, but they were also very well done.
• I thought the scenes with Harry and Remus talking were nice, but would have preferred most of them to be in Lupin’s office. Watching them talk alone seemed too “oriental monastery/Kung Fu-ish” too me. I practically expected Lupin to call Harry, “Grasshopper”, at one point.
• The film seemed choppy to me, with a lot of the subtlety of the books lost. A lot of the scenes that were in the book but cut from the film made the story in the book flow a lot smoother. This seems especially true with the exposition scenes: Mr. Weasley telling Harry about Sirius Black, Harry overhearing McGonagall et. al. in Hogsmeade, etc. In the book you don’t know how important those scenes are until later. In the movie, the way they are inserted makes them stand out and say “this must be important”.
• Crookshanks was underutilized and I don’t understand why. It would have been easy enough to use him to stop the Whomping Willow, like he did in the books. I also miss the Crookshanks/Sirius bonding. And where was Pidwidgeon? He was used by Ron to show that he trusted Crookshanks.
• Speaking of underutilized – where was the invisibility cloak for the second half of the story? Hiding behind pumpkins just doesn’t seem to be much of a replacement.
• I think the funniest line belongs to Hermione, “Does my hair really look like that from the rear?” Proves that she is indeed a girl. 😉
• While I am a Harry/Hermione shipper, I don’t think the film points in that direction, at least not immediately. If I were too extrapolate, based upon what I saw I would say that Ron and Hermione were going to have a relationship, break up and then maybe Harry/Hermione would happen.
• I know practically every fan review mentions this, but we never learn anything about the Marauders. Harry never even learns the his father was Prongs. A lot of emotional juice is drained from the story without this information. The fact that Harry’s Patronus is a stag is pretty meaningless without it for example.
• The Patronus wasn’t very good…it should have ran at the dementors. Just standing there glowing wasn’t nearly as interesting. The dementors were well done, though.
• I didn’t like Tom from the Leaky Cauldron…he was much better in the first film. Cornelius Fudge wasn’t smarmy enough.
• I did like the last half of the movie a lot. The time turning sequences were well handled. I definitely enjoyed watching Hermione pop in places. We didn’t really see the toll it took on her using the Time Turner over the year.

Just my $.02 worth. For someone els’s, here is Arya’s take on it.