Mugglecom's Expert Movie Reviewer Raving Gryffendor

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Look, I'm not one of those nitpicking nerds who automatically regards remakes or adaptations of beloved favorites as acts of indefensible sacrilege. Although it may seem shockingly un-cynical for a critic to confess, I was hoping -- even expecting -- to love this movie.

I've been a fan of every previous incarnation of Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" with the exception of the musical since I don't like musicals to begin with. This version was supposed to feature the same actors as before and introduce a new Dumbledore and other new characters, but the development of this story involved an entire new cast and setting of Hogwarts.

It turns out that plenty has gone wrong. The movie version of "Azkaban" manages to come up short in nearly every Hollywood-cliche way imaginable.

First: mind-bogglingly bad casting. A lot of dialog and many scenes are nearly identical to what was in previous versions. But Martin Freeman, playing the suddenly planetless Arthur Dent, gives us none of the alternately skeptical and astonished sense of down-the-rabbit-hole displacement he should convey. Instead of grounding the movie as its viewpoint sense-of-wonder character, the one with whom we can relate, Freeman all but disappears into the background as a non-entity. He spends most of the movie looking as if he just got out of bed -- and that's not just because he is in pajamas. What happened to simply signaling the Knight Bus after running away from the Dursleys?

Similarly, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin (Ford), an alien researcher for his kinds helps Harry (Arthur) leave Earth before it is demolished. Ford is supposed to be a genial, somewhat detached pragmatist who generally keeps his cool in even the most outrageously bad circumstances. That shouldn't translate to "monotone-mumbling zombie or an "enraged werewolf."


Worst of all, Marvin the depressed android looks like a widdle-and-cute refugee from Teletubbies land. What happened to an escaped fugitive from Azkaban??? Definitely not what I expected.Maybe the idea was to make him kid-friendly to sell plush toys to toddlers. What makes this design decision even sadder is that the very retro-clunky, squared-off version of Sirius Black has a cameo in the background of one scene. Now THAT's how a fugitive should look!


Second, the movie is not much fun. The effect of emphasizing and expanding the love triangle between Arthur (Harry), Trillian (Hermione) and Zaphod(Ron) replaces the previous versions' simmering low-key comic resentment with annoyingly soapy sentimentality. The hideous-bureaucratic-alien Vogons, shambling around in big monster suits, get so much screen time that the movie begins to resemble a Sid and Marty Krofft production. The movie's score gratingly jabs home every would-be comic moment. And every change to the original plot felt wrong. Maybe it's unfair to blame the movie's shortcomings on the other credited writer who came onboard to do whatever he did after the previous Dumbledore died, since I don't know who wrote what, but large parts of the script feel very "off."