“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is a different kind of Harry Potter movie, a better kind. Though its glossy look and exaggerated scale give it the required family resemblance to its predecessors, this third installment signals a change of course, away from the limited conventions of action-movie formula and into a more metaphysical direction. It’s where this fantasy series has wanted to go all along.
Director Alfonso Cuaron (“Y Tu Mama Tambien”) still has the burden, as did Chris Columbus, who directed the previous entries, of fashioning a film that works as a discrete entity and yet doesn’t disappoint the legions of fans for whom the movie can only be an adjunct to the reading experience. The strain is sometimes felt. Too much is left in, and there’s an uninflected quality to the movie’s first half hour, as if everything is being given equal importance.
But Cuaron’s respect for the material, going beyond the surface, enables him to steer clear of the twin traps of cuteness and meaningless freneticism. For Cuaron, the movie is more than just a chance to dazzle and amuse with spectacle. The amusing, dazzling spectacle is there, to be sure, and it’s better now than ever, arriving as it does within a context of recognizable of human emotion. Much more than its predecessors, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is a movie for adults, too.
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I have always liked the Harry Potter series. I think it has been great for encouraging kids to read, and I know my younger son loves it.
I wish someone would do Phillip Pullman’s Golden Compass series — I think it would be a great classic on the screen if done right. They are marketed as juveniles, but are really written for adults, I think. It’s a dark, rich series that intrigues me.