Viewing Date: June 4, 2004 (Technically - 12:01)

I was long anticipating this new installment to the Harry Potter movie saga started by the firsttwo movies. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban carries on the story by taking the third book to the big screen. A warning to readers: I am a big fan of Harry Potter so don’t expect this review to be unbiased, or not filled with spoilers.

The adaptation to the screen is particularly well done, I believe. They left out parts of the book which aren’t particularly important to the story - you don’t need to know details that Harry discovers about the trial of Sirius or the other dropped hints of the book. They left in possibly enough in order to figure out who the real culprit of the crime was before the end. The hints for other mysteries are a little less clear. I got the feeling that there is considerably less kitch left in the movie as in the book - people who read the book and wanted to know some things because they were in previous books didn’t get those parts into the movie.

The acting wasn’t incredible, but they are still kid actors, so I don’t expect too much from them. The directing was superb - the movie had a good pace, keeping the audience interested. Special effects were used more sparinly throughout this movie it seemed, but that may have been simply because there wasn’t that many scenes like the Quiddich matches in the previous movies.

Overall I thought the movie was excellent, and if I got the chance to see it in the theater again I probably even would splurge for popcorn and a drink to enjoy with it. On my review scale it gets a 7.