A few years back, when word first hit that the popular Harry Potter books were going to be adapted as feature films, Haley Joel Osment's name was one of the first to come up for the title role. After such an impressive showing in The Sixth Sense he seemed like a natural.

It was quickly shot down by the producers who wanted an English boy. No matter, Osment said he wouldn't do it because he felt the books shouldn't have been made into a movie, that he liked them as books.

I found myself agreeing with him after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and really agreeing with him after Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The second one in particular felt rushed, poorly executed, and missing all of the fun and charm of Jo Rowling's books.

I'd hoped the change of directors would improve things. Out went Chris Columbus, who directed the first two, and in came Alfonso Cuaron, director of A Little Princess and Y Tu Mama Tambien.

Maybe what's needed is a change in screenwriters. While Cuaron has added a stylish feel to the film and handled the dark material well, not to mention gotten great performances out of the kids who constitute its cast, the film is still rushed and lacking Rowling's touch.

Case in point is the beginning. Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe) horrid aunt Marge comes to visit and her abysmal behavior causes Harry to lose it and inflate her like a balloon. In the book, Rowling built the tension slowly, with one outrageous comment after another causing Harry to slowly boil over in anger until things come to a head.

In the film, this is all dispatched in about five minutes. For someone unfamiliar with the books, Harry comes off like a punk and a brat, behaving worse than his cousin Dudley. I realize Cuaron wants to get to the meat of the story, but in the process they don't set up their hero well.

The premise of The Prisoner of Azkaban is probably the most straightforward of all the books. Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), multiple murderer and supporter of Lord Voldemort, has escaped from the wizard prison of Azkaban and is on the loose. There is concern he may come after Harry, who has no reason to want to mess with him.

Then Harry surreptitiously learns what he thinks is the truth: that Black betrayed his parents and caused their deaths at the hands of Lord Voldemort. Now he's angry and wants revenge.

Unlike most kid movies made in America, the Harry Potter films do a good job of relating kids to adults. Harry talks to his Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher Professor Lupin (David Thewlis) almost as though they were peers, or at least on the same level. The adults are not condescending; they expect these young adults to behave like adults. Let's hear it for British stiff upper lip.

At the same time, the kids in these movies are maturing really fast. The biggest physical change was in Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom. He's almost unrecognizable from the sad sack he was in the first film, save for that overbite.

Daniel Radcliffe has grown into near-adulthood and the role with equal ease, showing a much wider range of emotion here. Emma Watson has also grown into the role, playing the appropriately bossy Hermione without being a brat. The one actor I'm not keen on is Tom Felton, who still overacts to the point of ridiculousness, even though Malfoy is more of a calm character.

Cuaron and screenwriter Steve Kloves seem to have dispatched much of the early and middle parts of the book in favor of the ending. The end result is no Oliver Wood and almost none of my favorite characters, Fred and George Weasley. But even with emphasis on the climax, the whole story from Lupin and Black to Harry is rushed. If ever a movie needed an extended home edition, this is it. You have to really force yourself to forget the books and try to take in this film as a film.


In that regard, it's excellent, far better than the first two. The improvements are across the board. The CG is better, the kids are all getting better as actors and the adults are perfect in their roles. It's just tough for me, who has driven to Las Vegas and San Francisco many times and enjoyed Jim Dale's excellent readings of the books on CD and all his fantastic voices.

(On that note, if anyone can recommend a good audio CD for LotR please let me know. I had one read by Rob Inglis and found him unbearable.)

Score: 8 out of 10