Author: PinkFluffyBunny
Date: 7/4/04
Rating: 3.5
Movie Rating: PG
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(you may not want to read this review if you haven't read the books)
To sum this movie up, there were only four good things about it.
Actually, none of those things, except for three, were in the book. That doesn't really say much about the movie.
Okay, right, the new director sucks. I know that the movie was going to be really long before they shortened it, but still, they could have AT LEAST stopped to explain some things. It went way too fast, and if I hadn't read the books, I would've been so confused.
Snape is a whiny jerk. He was supposed to be cool!
Snape is one of the only male characters that's above 20 to not have a mustache that appears in the movie.
Lupin is way too shrimpy and has a mustache.
Sirius has a mustache, thin, BROWN hair, and pretty much has a horrible actor assigned to him, except for when he was trying to stop Lupin from turning into a Werewolf.
Daniel Radcliffe, once again, SUCKS AT ACTING. Also, his eyes are still blue, when it states more than just a few times in the series that he has green eyes.
No one explained who Padfoot, Moony, etc. were.
Dobby, the house elf dude person, never appears at all in the movie. If I'm not horribly mistaken, I think he was supposed to.
The new actor for Dumbledore has a long beard, but has a ponytail beard (you know, where they put a hair tie in the beard...). He wasn't too great at acting, either.
Malfoy may be a jerk, but he's not a sniveling little weakling. Completely wrong portrayal of him there, too.
They tried to FORCE some sort of romance between Hermione and Harry and Hermione and Ron. When Buckbeak was being killed, she latched onto Ron and Harry wrapped his arms around her too. When they were almost killed by Lupin, all Harry and Hermione did was hug each other like that would make him go away.
They also tried to put in some sort of angsty self pity thing in with Harry when he found out about Sirius "giving away" his parents' location to Voldemort, which he didn't, obviously.
Pettigrew looked way too much like a rat and he disturbed me. If I recall, J.K. Rowling only said "rat-like qualities," rather than actually having buck teeth or whatever...
To simply put it, there were only one or two accurate portrayals of ANYTHING, man or creature or plant, in the movie, it went way too fast, there was forced romance, and for some reason, half of the above 20 guys had mustaches.
Don't waste your money unless you're a die-hard Harry Potter fan. Well, actually, you'd probably hate it more, then, unless you were willing to take anything that has to do with Harry Potter. So, don't go unless you want food and have a free night and you're really bored.
One more thing, which has more to do with J.K. Rowling than the director. Has anyone heard of Terry Brooks? No? Well, he's a writer that wrote the Shannara series (which came long before the Harry pottery books), which are excellent, by the way, and he had creatures called Mord Wraiths in one of his books. Guess what they looked like.
Guess!
No? Okay, exactly like dementors. And, one would get a cold feeling whenever around them (which J.K. Rowling took and made it literal). They were both large and cloaked/hooded, with sharp nails and weird hands (although Mord Wraiths had skin-colored hands, and they looked like they were rotting).
I give Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban a 3.5, as some things were amusing/cool, although there weren't many, and I saw it with most of my friends, so it gave us somewhere to go and amusement when we made fun of it.