Shooting the Breeze: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The third film in the Harry Potter series may be the shortest but it's also clearly the best so far.
I have never read a Harry Potter book and I don't envisage reading them until J.K. Rowling finishes her 7-book series and all the films are made.
The first two Harry Potter films were released within weeks of the first two Lord of the Rings films and comparisons can be drawn only in their shared epic lengths and literary origins (at roughly 3 hours apiece there is still plenty that has had to be pared down from the original source materials).
From watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets it is clear that Chris Columbus was a safe choice as a director.
He made the movies authentic but his style was sometimes literal and lacked the imagination that the director of the third installment - Alfonso Cuaron, a Mexican director of some repute - has lent to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Weighing in at a shorter but still substantial 2hrs and 20 mins Cuaron's Potter film is darker, edgier and shows the Harry and his friends starting to grow up at Hogwarts School. The regular cast was helped along by the addition of cameos by Dawn French and Lenny Henry alongside Emma Thompson as a new divination teacher.
The late Richard Harris was replaced by Michael Gambon as the wise wizard Dumbledore while Gary Oldman put in another fine performance as the titular Prisoner of Azkaban.
The plotting is much less linear and the final act also adds spice to the series with a familiar-seeming plot device that has been done before but which fits in very well into this film.
I really enjoyed this latest installment and would be more eagerly looking forward to the next film in the series were it not for the fact that Cuaron has already handed over the reins to Mike Newell for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Let's hope he can keep up with the new standard...
