Potter-Thon: Day 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban

The American director of the first two films in the series, Chris Columbus, was moved down as simply a producer for this movie, and he was replaced by the Mexican director Alfonzo Cáurón, who, up until that point, was best known for directing the Spanish-language film “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” which, for those of you who didn't take Spanish, means “And your mother, too,” about two recent high-school graduates who take a car trip tour of Mexico with a recently widowed twenty-something woman, who fulfills all of their most thought-out fantasies, if you, uh, know what I mean. That may sound like it's really raunchy (which it is), but it's also smart and, as long as you don't mind subtitles, should appeal to many of you reading this who are my age. Unsurprisingly, though, this movie was more popular than “Y Tu Mama Tambien” ever was and will likely ever be, and it is the third Harry Potter film that concerns this blog entry, not “Y Tu Mama Tambien.” This film is often considered the best Harry Potter film ever made, and, after watching it again, I'd have to say, I can understand why they'd say that, as well as (at least for now) agree with them. This film starts branching out from the confines of the books, and ultimately is perfectly capable of forming its own identity and really begins to develop the characters the way that they were developed in the book, which some people may not like considering the faithfulness of the first two movies, but, like I said in my first blog post, some people prefer that to the approach of this film and the ones following it, and vise versa. The additions made to this film that weren't in its respective source material are very commonly successful, like the quip-sprouting shrunken head on the Knight Bus, which, for an odd reason, reminds me of Statler and Waldorf from “The Muppet Show.” This is also the darkest movie so far in the series, with the violence really beginning to push the limits of on the film's PG rating. Many of you watching along with me were alarmed that the Ministry would actually ally themselves with such vicious creatures as dementors, but in two films many of you will see why (hopefully). As I mentioned in the last post, “Prisoner of Azkeban” is much leaner than the last two overlong installments in the series. Now, due to “Prisoner of Azkeban” being in production at the same time as the next movie, “Goblet of Fire,” Cáurón did not return as director for the latter film, so he was replaced by the first actual British director of the films, Mike Newell, who later went on to direct last summer's moderately successful but quickly forgotten “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.” (More on Newell's turn as director in next post.)