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Poster (c) Warner Bros.
The titular wizard (Daniel Radcliffe) is back for his third year of wizarding school at Hogwarts. After defeating the evil wizard Voldemort twice already, he learns that a serial killer, Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), has escaped from Azkaban prison and is out to get him. In addition, the prison guards, computer-generated Dementors, come to Hogwarts looking for Black, but seem to affect Harry, also. Add some more teenage angst (after all, these people are 13), and you've got a recipe for a great third film of a series.
It's sad to see how much of an asset Cuaron is to the Harry Potter series to see all of his talent go down the drain by a truly awful script by Steven Kloves. His first two scripts were mediocre-just general, basically stealing exactly from the book. But this script, being that it's based off the longest of three books so far made into movies (and it's the best of the five so far), his first mistake is making it shorter than the first two. A book that's maybe 75 pages longer than the others shouldn't be 20-30 minutes less than those. The movie's really for those who have read the books, because most of the things that are crucial are just referenced to in the movie. Many other crucial details are just plain left out in order for more "humor" involving the Whomping Willow tree.
But now I have to praise Cuaron. He takes the mess that is Kloves' script and does the best he can with it, which is pretty good. As I said previously, the first two movies were pretty childish and by-the-book, so to speak. Here, Cuaron uses adult stylings to make this movie more open to adults. Instead of showing off what he can do with special effects, he uses them minimally, basically as an understatement, just using them whenever necessary. Therefore, this scarcity of the special effects made them more welcome. Although the werewolf that comes in at the end of the movie looked like it was something straight out of Van Helsing, at least it wasn't too overdone.
I also have to applaud Cuaron for his artistic license. In Kloves' previous scripts, he had a few Quidditch games that went on for way too long, brought nothing to the table, and looked way too fake. Here, there's only one that's short and has a purpose. Although everything had a purpose in J.K. Rowling's books, here much felt rushed and just there to get it out of the way. That's what it's like in Azkaban, also, but it, for the most part, works, since I have read the books. Much of what was needed to make the books work weren't in the movie and were omitted for the relationship between the characters to build. And it worked. You could see the palpable bonding between most of the characters. That's why this movie is better than the first two: it spends more time on what we actually care about: the characters, not how much money they had in the budget to create special effects.
Sure, I have a few complaints, such as John Cleese not coming back as the ghost Nearly-Headless-Nick, Gary Oldman's underuse, and other minor details. But for the most part, Cuaron saves a movie series from a line of childish directing and terrible writing and turns it into something that is very real and something that other series (such as the Lord of the Rings) could have used.
Rated PG for frightening moments, creature violence and mild language.
Review Date: June 6, 2004