Tuesday, June 01, 2004
The Prisoner of Azkaban
OK, mandatory spoiler warning here, for that small number of people who haven't read the book but still intend to see the film.
For once, we in the UK have managed to get an earlier release than the rest of the world, so I've just returned from seeing it. Here are my thoughts...
Overall, I had a fairly mixed impression of this film. It's quite difficult to separate the film from the book, so I'm not even going to try!
I'm not sure that anyone who hadn't read all three books would have understood quite a bit that was going on - there were quite a few major plot points that are needed for the remaining books left un- or poorly explained (e.g. who were Prongs, Mooney, et al, and what was the purpose of their map? Why was Harry's Patronus a stag? What was Professor Trelawney's prediction about? How and why did Sirius choose now to escape from Azkaban? And where was the Quidditch championship, the best bit of the book?!)
But it was still fairly enjoyable. Many excellent visual effects - Harry's Patronus, the flying scenes round Hogwart's and the mirror-images in the first Boggart scene in particular spring to mind. There also seemed to be a lot more humour (both normal and black) than the previous films - the books themselves are very funny, but I never got the impression from the first two films that Harry ever laughed or even smiled.
Emma Watson is also starting to look like a pretty good actress - it'll be interesting to see how her career goes on after HP. Ron, OTOH, could almost have been edited out of this film without anyone noticing!
And finally, on a completely unrelated note. Go Tim! Just 2 more. But then we've been here before...
For once, we in the UK have managed to get an earlier release than the rest of the world, so I've just returned from seeing it. Here are my thoughts...
Overall, I had a fairly mixed impression of this film. It's quite difficult to separate the film from the book, so I'm not even going to try!
I'm not sure that anyone who hadn't read all three books would have understood quite a bit that was going on - there were quite a few major plot points that are needed for the remaining books left un- or poorly explained (e.g. who were Prongs, Mooney, et al, and what was the purpose of their map? Why was Harry's Patronus a stag? What was Professor Trelawney's prediction about? How and why did Sirius choose now to escape from Azkaban? And where was the Quidditch championship, the best bit of the book?!)
But it was still fairly enjoyable. Many excellent visual effects - Harry's Patronus, the flying scenes round Hogwart's and the mirror-images in the first Boggart scene in particular spring to mind. There also seemed to be a lot more humour (both normal and black) than the previous films - the books themselves are very funny, but I never got the impression from the first two films that Harry ever laughed or even smiled.
Emma Watson is also starting to look like a pretty good actress - it'll be interesting to see how her career goes on after HP. Ron, OTOH, could almost have been edited out of this film without anyone noticing!
And finally, on a completely unrelated note. Go Tim! Just 2 more. But then we've been here before...
posted by Chip : 23:30
2 comments
Comments:
That's a bit disappointing. I thought the whole Prongs/patronus relation was quite clever in the book. Curious to see how Thewlis does as Lupin. In true nerd form, I'm currently re-reading the book prior to going to see the film which looks like it'll have to wait until sometime next week.
I thought he was very good - a lot better than Kenneth Branagh was as Lockhart in the 2nd one.
Don't let me put you off going to see it though!
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Don't let me put you off going to see it though!
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