Harry Potter Misses the Snitch
Again this is written by Lo and she retains all original rights to the piece. There are plenty of reviews out there which like the movie, here's one who doesn't. And don't read it if you want the movie to be a surprise (obviously).
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Apparently, Harry Potter fans don't have to worry anymore about Lord
Voldemort murdering Harry; it looks as though the new director will do
it for him. While J.K. Rowlings
The Prisoner of Azkaban has it
all--excitement, characters, drama, death, quidditch--the movie misses
the mark in many of these areas. The movie brushes past key plot
points
and focuses in on scenes that give the movie a distractingly creepy
feel... and not scarey ghost story creepy but surrealistic creepy.
First, there is the matter of the new Professor Dumbledore. Not being
big on change, I was preparing myself to be annoyed by this character
at
first. Nothing prepared me for what they've done to Dumbledore. In
the
scene with the Fat Lady's ripped photograph, he runs his fingers across
it and you realize he has the nastiest, thickest, yellowest fingernails
of all time. Further, he has several scenes that make him seem, rather
than the wise and all-knowing Dumbledore of the first four books, like
an old dotard who doesn't really know what's going on. This is going
to
hurt the series of movies in the long run because the mistake he has
made over the course of the previous five years will not come as much
of
a shock if you think he's a fool all along.
Also, you wind up not caring much about the characters at all because
the director left out scenes that would explain their motivations. The
director left out all reference to the necessity of winning the
Quidditch tournament, he didn't develop the idea that Harry's Patronus
is the animagus shape his father used to take,
and he blew right on by the extent of the horror the dementors inflict
on him. Lupin was creepy, Snape never comes back ranting that Harry
let
Sirius out of the castle, Hermoine and Ron seem to be far more
awkward/romantic together than necessary (a dangerous choice since none
of us know where the last two books will take them), and several scenes
are spoken so quickly that they are difficult to follow and feel
rehearsed.
The lighting and cinematography are quite different in this movie as
well. Much of the movie is trying to be symbolic of something,
although
you're never quite sure what that might be. The scenes are all very
dark. This lack of contrast is distracting. It lacks the magic of the
previous two films because it is dark and creepy throughout rather than
building to the dark and creepy encounter with Sirius.
Finally, there are a few sexual references that make it hard to watch
this movie. The first and most distracting comes when Lupin is telling
Harry about his parents. He says, "Oh yes, I knew your mother," which
really makes it sound like he knew her in the Biblical sense. This
made
a few of us laugh through what was supposed to be a serious part of the
movie. Then when Sirius talks about knowing Harry's mother, you're
reminded of Lupin and start laughing all over.
One of the redeeming qualities of the movie is the appearance of the
dementors. These are about as scarey as you could hope, and the special
effects make them very cool. The movie starts to take shape again at
the end when Hermoine and Harry have to go back in time. Here it
sticks
more closely to the book, and so the plot comes back and the
surrealistic camera angles go away. Another excellent scene is the
scene with the boggart. There's nothing quite like seeing Snape in
Neville's grandmother's clothes.
I give this movie a C or a C-, which is very discouraging because it is
perhaps the best of the five books. I would recommend you see it
because you will need to in order to follow the rest of the movies, but
it relied too heavily on the fact that most of the viewers have read
the
books and used that as an excuse to avoid creating a coherent plot
line.
It's worth $6.50, though, to see Hermoine deck Malfoy, and the last
half hour really does make up for a lot of the sins of the previous
hour
and a half. On the whole, they should have paid the last director more
to stay with the project.
Posted by 10lees at June 4, 2004 01:29 PM