Harry Potter Month - Mini Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chris Columbus steps down as director and there are some significant changes in style as a result, most of which stick throughout the remaining films. Obviously the death of Richard Harris resulted in a recast for Dumbledore. Sir Michael Gambon took the role.

It was produced with a $130m budget and made $796.7m at the box office, which, whilst still successful, is the least of any Harry Potter movie. I’ll suggest a possible reason for the boost when I do the review for the next film, but let’s take a look at this one first.

Whilst aside from Michael Gambon taking the role of Dumbledore there are no changes in actors, there are some significant changes to their looks. Corneleus fudge, for example seems to have grown whilst Professor Flitwick has renewed his hair colour and had a bit of a facelift (originally the conductor wasn’t supposed to be Flitwick, but it just worked better – also, who was doing the training for a choir at the beginning of term)

The castle, whilst I believe still the same set has also had a redesign with Hagrid’s hut now residing at the bottom of a hill, with the Womping Qillow near the top, they had both been on flat ground in the first movies. Also more focus on the bridge which will have importance later.

In tonal news, there’s a surprising amount of comic relief in this story. A lot of it added to the movie as opposed to being part of the book. It helps build some of the dynamics amongst the characters and foreshadows the womping willow which comes into use in the finale.

But for the story itself, a murderous Voldemort supporter named Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban Prison, purportedly to seek out and kill Harry Potter. Hogwarts is placed under the guard of dementors, freakish little things that can suck out emotion, freeze anything nearby and suck out your soul. But secrets are revealed which forever alter the perspective of our heroes.

I said that the first one was a classic adventure, the second akin to a mystery, the third one is more akin to a horror feature, with a science fiction element (the time-turner) thrown in for good measure. The horror element works, the Dementors look as terrifying as they should, and the atmosphere in the story overall fits the theme nicely.

This is also one of the best handled time travel stories I’ve ever seen. This is the first one that doesn’t form some sort of paradox that I’m aware of. We just see different perspectives on the same events, revealing that the future selves are responsible for certain odd actions affecting their past selves.

The Marauder’s map looks decent and does what it should, although I wish they’d properly explained Lupin’s and Sirus' connection to the map (being Mooney and Padfoot respectively) I like the new additions to the Knight Bus but don’t like the opening where Harry uses magic to try and practice a spell when even the dialogue in a later scene implies that he can’t use magic outside of school.

But overall it still is an enjoyable movie for the last standalone movie in the series. The next 5 movies (and the 4 books) are more of an epic tale, but we’ll get to that in the coming days.

Rating 80/100

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Images used in this review are from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use