"Prisoner of Azkaban": minimalist, realistic, artistic

Gone are the heartwarming overtures, billowing black robes, and cutesy cliché punch lines of the first two films based on the internationally best-selling Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. The selection of new director Alfonso Cuarón ("The Little Princess," "Y Tu Mama Tambien") was a daring decision that initially raised eyebrows in the Potterphile community, but eventually stirred up even more hype than usual for the release of the highly anticipated movie. The regime change, a rather drastic transition from the more sentimental and family-oriented Chris Columbus to the edgier and more raw Cuarón, expresses itself in the generally morbid, dark, and creepy atmosphere of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." Although Cuarón succeeded in creating a more realistic and artistic movie in comparison to its two prequels, the pace of the third installment is too fast and plots are significantly underdeveloped.

Cuarón took a great deal of artistic liberty with the Harry Potter world. The sets, especially those of the Leaky Cauldron and the Shrieking Shack, are very bleak, decrepit, and dark.

The viewer becomes more aware of the fact that Hogwarts, the wizard's boarding school that main characters Harry, Ron and Hermione attend, sits atop a craggy mountain, as Cuarón takes the majority of the scenes outside of the castle. Students at Hogwarts, formerly suited in private school uniforms and swathed in black robes, find themselves wearing jeans and sweatshirts and being much more casual with teachers. The latter is emphasized memorably in Harry's first Defense Against the Dark Arts class, when Professor Lupin puts on a jazz record as students practice attacking a magical shape shifting creature.Devout readers might be shocked at Cuarón's lack of strict adherence to Rowling's novel (formerly a top priority for Columbus), the most startling examples of which include a talking Jamaican shrunken head on the Knight Bus and a Hogwarts chorus holding gargantuan singing toads at the Welcoming Feast. However, once recovered from the initial shock, they may very well appreciate Cuarón's insert of the first night back at Hogwarts in the boys' dormitory and his unique depiction of invisible Harry's mud-flinging scene in Hogsmeade. In fact, Cuarón's and screenwriter Steve Kloves' departure from the novel contribute to its coherence; they further separate the two media, book and film, allowing fans to like (or dislike, as the case might be) the film based on its own merits as a movie and not on its adherence to the book.

The release of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" was delayed from mid-November until the beginning of June because of the producers' desire to take more time with the film's innumerable special effects. It was worth the wait; moviegoers will be impressed with the hippogriff, dementors, Patronuses, Marauder's Map, and Professor Lupin's positively frightening transformation into a werewolf.

Harry Potter's adult cast has been graced with talent; Alan Rickman as the slimy Potions Professor Snape, Dame Maggie Smith as the strict Transfiguration Professor McGonagall, Robbie Coltrane as the lovable half giant Rubeus Hagrid, and the late Richard Harris as the wise and caring Headmaster Dumbledore. "Prisoner of Azkaban" boasts several new celebrity additions. Michael Gambon ("Angels in America") replaces Harris as Dumbledore, and it appears Harris' shoes were indeed too big to fill; Gambon's aging hippie portrayal of a character to which Harris brought majesty and reverence leaves the viewer pining for Harris' deliberate, gravelly voice and subtle energy. David Thewlis ("The Big Lebowski") aptly plays a compassionate and friendly Professor Lupin, and Emma Thompson ("Love Actually") brings distinct dottiness and garish drama to the role of Hogwarts' disillusioned and bizarre Divination teacher. Timothy Spall ("The Last Samurai") briefly shocks viewers as Peter Pettigrew, startlingly embodying his sniveling cowardly character. The prisoner of Azkaban himself, the infamous Sirius Black, is a little too spastically acted by Gary Oldman ("Hannibal"), who fails to express his character's depth and intensity but who worked relatively well with the material he was given. Surprisingly, fourteen-year-old Emma Watson steals the screen with her performance as Harry's brainy friend Hermione Granger. Although Daniel Radcliffe's acting skills have improved since "Chamber of Secrets", Watson still outshines both Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, who plays Harry's adorably amusing best friend Ron Weasley. Grint got less screen time in "Prisoner of Azkaban", the reverse of Tom Felton's fate; his character, Harry's school nemesis Draco Malfoy, playing a thoroughly hatefully bully, benefits from the modernization of the student roles.

The most disappointing aspect of "Prisoner of Azkaban" is the breakneck pace at which the plots, which remain largely unexplained, progress.

The deep friendship among Lupin, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Harry's parents James and Lily Potter is only briefly touched upon, thereby making the circumstances of several key scenes less believable and rather confusing. The scene that should have set the entire movie in motion, Harry, Ron, and Hermione's eavesdropping on a conversation in The Three Broomsticks (a pub in the wizarding village of Hogsmeade), is short and vague. The scene in the Shrieking Shack, one that the book spent several pages on revealing the lies, misconceptions, and truths about the murder of Harry's parents and Black's escape, is barely five minutes long in the two-and-a-half hour movie, the script for which only skimmed the surface of the complex character entanglements that Rowling worked so hard to build and interweave and Cuarón worked so hard to pare down and summarize. Also, the fact that the zealously studious Hermione had been using a tiny magical version of a time machine in order to attend multiple classes at once in the book is overlooked in the movie, chronicled only by a befuddled Ron asking, about four times, "Hey, where'd she come from?" Also, the smoldering mutual hatred between Hermione and Ron due to her cat repeatedly attacking Ron's rat, which led to her exclusion from the trio for the majority of the school year in the novel, is glossed over and ignored, replaced by random sexual tension.Although not necessarily what Potterfreaks are craving, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" is a must-see for Rowling fans. As for those who haven't read the book 940829032482304 times, or possibly haven't even read it at all, chances are that "Azkaban" could entertain you, but not enough to lure you into Potterphilia.

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (141 minutes) is rated PG for frightening moments, creature violence and mild language.