Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban review

2004.06.06 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole

If you hadn't noticed already, we are living in the golden age of sequels. Not just sequels, really: franchises. Blockbusters today are vetted by executives in part for their potential to blossom into multi-episode trans-generational money-makers. And Harry Potter is one of the best.

Sequels used to be dreary retreads with less money and lesser talent. But franchises are cultivated, husbanded, tended, cherished... even loved (if love is an emotion a studio executive is capable of). The sequels to Jaws make movie-lovers cringe, but franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones are the stuff that dreams are made of—both for fans and for movie-makers.

Franchises aren't at all new, of course. The Bulldog Drummond, Thin Man, and Andy Hardy series were big hits as early as the 1930s. And the venerable Tarzan and James Bond make Harry Potter look like... well, like a thirteen-year-old boy.

I wish there were an easy way to link to a film franchise in the Internet Movie Database, but unfortunately there is not.

Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third in the series, which closely follows the books by JK Rowling. I don't care much for the debate about novel vs. film (they're completely different kinds of story-telling), so I won't address that here. The story tells of Harry's adventures in his third year at Hogwart's school for wayward magicians (or whatever it's called; all the kids seem troubled), when an infamous criminal linked to Harry has escaped his magic prison.

All the regular cast are back, except for the late Richard Harris, who is graciously replaced by Michael Gambon. That's another great thing about franchises. In the old days of crummy sequels, you could hardly hope to get more than one or two leads from the original cast; but if you plan a whole franchise, make a multi-picture deal, and produce a quality film, the whole cast will gladly return.

Daniel Radcliffe is a gem as Harry and will likely grow into a talented actor (eventually). Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as Hermione and Ron are better still (altho Rubert still seems to think that swallowing hard is a form of acting). They whisper, shout, scream, and occasionally squeal Rowling's dialog via Steven Kloves, who also wrote the previous Potter scripts. As usual, there isn't much that's memorable in it, but it serves the "Hardy Boys adventure" story well enough.

Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También) takes over the director's chair from Chris Columbus this time, and the result is a bit darker and richer (thanks also to the score by the legendary John Williams). The world of Harry Potter seems a little bigger, altho the unfortunate economy of the previous films remains: every interesting thing becomes crucial to the plot later on.

It's as if producer Columbus lives and breathes the old advice from Chekhov: "If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last." (I'm sorry to say that I'm not the first person who's made this observation.) George Lucas showed that you can enrich the universe of the story by tossing off some of that interesting stuff as mere set dressing. Moreover, you'd expect that some trinkets would be left unexplained for now; there are, after all, seven Potter movies planned.

But these are small nitpicks against a movie that is fun and lively. The special effects are interesting and effective; the story fast and clever. It didn't have quite the visceral punch that I got from the climax of the second film, when Harry went at the bad guy with a sword, but it did have a couple of nice emotional twists that were quite satisfying—and that annoying Jar-Jar-esque Dobby was nowhere in sight.

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