Friday, June 18, 2004
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was a big sack of disappointing yesterday afternoon.
Visually the film looked stunning, with the highest production values yet. From what I can remember of the other films this year Hogwarts looked vastly different, now halfway up the side of a mountain, every scene had steps or stairs in, practically no scene was done on the flat once back at the school. It was reminiscent of the temple at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while most of the rest of the film seemed transposed to the Rivendell set from LotR. The largely unthreatening Dementors looked like the Ringwraiths from Fellowship of the Ring that had been put on a rack.
The actors covered the range, but the keyword this year was 'underused'. The film harked back to the first movie, where the amount of information that it was judged necessary to impart to the viewer meant that there was no sense given that this was a story that took part over a year of Harry's life, instead we were given a number of scenes, Harry inflates his aunty, The Knight Bus, arriving at Diagon Alley, back at school, the Boggart lesson... This bodes ill for films four and five, considering the sizes of the books in question.
But all the adult cast had little more than brief cameo roles, Alan Rickman doing little more than passing through a few times to be malevolent at Harry. Gary Oldman as Sirius Black was especially disappointing, phoning his performance in while coming by to collect his cheque. For all her faults as a writer, in the book J.K. Rowling really manages to generate a sense of menace as Harry waits all year to confront the man he thinks betrayed his parents to their deaths. This film is too busy so we get none of that here and Oldman's lacklustre performance doesn't make up for it.
On the complete opposite end of the scale David Thewlis is the star of the show as Professor Lupin, really making the most of his butchered screentime. What wasn't the most dynamic or even interesting of characters in the book comes out here as someone of some complexity, his affection for Harry, his sadness at the loss of Harry's parents, his anger at Sirius and his own affliction. Each of the Harry Potter films have the 'lump in the throat' moment, in the first film it's when Harry sees his dead parents in the Wishing Mirror, in this it's almost every scene with Harry and Lupin, either when the teacher talks about Harry's parents or at the end when he reveals he's having to leave the school. Elsewhere Plums has rightly said that this film uses werewolves as a metaphor for queerness, in that last scene Lupin never actually says what it is about him that scares people (he doesn't actually have to as Harry knows full well) but there was a real emotional relevence there for watchers of a certain ilk.
Of our three main heroes, Rupert Grint seemed to spend the movie actually going through puberty, I swear the movie ends with the sound of his plums dropping. He certainly doesn't get to do much else. Daniel Radcliffe shows off his limitations as Harry, whilst he's quite able to do 'mischievous' and 'angry' he's just completely unable to do 'upset', when he finds out that Sirius Black betrayed his parents to their death the script calls for sobbing and he looks like he's just heard his favourite indie band aren't playing at Glastonbury after all. Would it have been too much to ask him to chop some onions up before that scene? Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy fares even worse. While he's not the most two-dimensional of characters in the books in this film he doesn't even reach one-dimensionality, turning up in several scenes to say something mean, be beaten up in a variety of ways by our heroes and then run away crying. I actually feel sorry for him when Hermione punches him and I resent that. Our heroes have almost become the school bullies. Emma Watson is outstanding as Hermione, confidently leading Harry to save the day. He may be the Boy Who Lived but she's the Girl Who Thinks and uncomplainingly does all the work so Harry can get all the credit.
The biggest laugh of the film was for the walk-on (well, sit-in) appearence of Ian Brown as a wizard. The climactic scenes are a bit of a mess too, not ruined but careless. How does Harry know a secret passage under the Whomping Willow leads into the Shrieking Shack? And without explaining that his father was an Animagus why does Harry see a stagg and think his father came to save him and Sirius? Second time around why do we not see him conjure a Patronus stagg when we see things from his point of view? Seems as though when the script was written the Animagus plot was dropped except for the minimum needed to explain Peter Pettigrew but it was decided to have the Patronus stagg first time round to satisfy the book fans.
And some adult moments for the grown-ups? Opening the film with Harry 'playing with his wand' under the bed covers, looking at books? That'll do. And for slashtastic action, look very closely at the scene when draco and Harry meet for the first time in the film. Draco is so sizing Harry up and thinking 'my but you've grown Potter', I swear. They so need their own room in the Slytherin dungeons.
In summary, pretty to look at but otherwise largely disappointing. So maybe Harry Potter will be like Star Trek movies, each odd-numbered episode is shit.
Visually the film looked stunning, with the highest production values yet. From what I can remember of the other films this year Hogwarts looked vastly different, now halfway up the side of a mountain, every scene had steps or stairs in, practically no scene was done on the flat once back at the school. It was reminiscent of the temple at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while most of the rest of the film seemed transposed to the Rivendell set from LotR. The largely unthreatening Dementors looked like the Ringwraiths from Fellowship of the Ring that had been put on a rack.
The actors covered the range, but the keyword this year was 'underused'. The film harked back to the first movie, where the amount of information that it was judged necessary to impart to the viewer meant that there was no sense given that this was a story that took part over a year of Harry's life, instead we were given a number of scenes, Harry inflates his aunty, The Knight Bus, arriving at Diagon Alley, back at school, the Boggart lesson... This bodes ill for films four and five, considering the sizes of the books in question.
But all the adult cast had little more than brief cameo roles, Alan Rickman doing little more than passing through a few times to be malevolent at Harry. Gary Oldman as Sirius Black was especially disappointing, phoning his performance in while coming by to collect his cheque. For all her faults as a writer, in the book J.K. Rowling really manages to generate a sense of menace as Harry waits all year to confront the man he thinks betrayed his parents to their deaths. This film is too busy so we get none of that here and Oldman's lacklustre performance doesn't make up for it.
On the complete opposite end of the scale David Thewlis is the star of the show as Professor Lupin, really making the most of his butchered screentime. What wasn't the most dynamic or even interesting of characters in the book comes out here as someone of some complexity, his affection for Harry, his sadness at the loss of Harry's parents, his anger at Sirius and his own affliction. Each of the Harry Potter films have the 'lump in the throat' moment, in the first film it's when Harry sees his dead parents in the Wishing Mirror, in this it's almost every scene with Harry and Lupin, either when the teacher talks about Harry's parents or at the end when he reveals he's having to leave the school. Elsewhere Plums has rightly said that this film uses werewolves as a metaphor for queerness, in that last scene Lupin never actually says what it is about him that scares people (he doesn't actually have to as Harry knows full well) but there was a real emotional relevence there for watchers of a certain ilk.
Of our three main heroes, Rupert Grint seemed to spend the movie actually going through puberty, I swear the movie ends with the sound of his plums dropping. He certainly doesn't get to do much else. Daniel Radcliffe shows off his limitations as Harry, whilst he's quite able to do 'mischievous' and 'angry' he's just completely unable to do 'upset', when he finds out that Sirius Black betrayed his parents to their death the script calls for sobbing and he looks like he's just heard his favourite indie band aren't playing at Glastonbury after all. Would it have been too much to ask him to chop some onions up before that scene? Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy fares even worse. While he's not the most two-dimensional of characters in the books in this film he doesn't even reach one-dimensionality, turning up in several scenes to say something mean, be beaten up in a variety of ways by our heroes and then run away crying. I actually feel sorry for him when Hermione punches him and I resent that. Our heroes have almost become the school bullies. Emma Watson is outstanding as Hermione, confidently leading Harry to save the day. He may be the Boy Who Lived but she's the Girl Who Thinks and uncomplainingly does all the work so Harry can get all the credit.
The biggest laugh of the film was for the walk-on (well, sit-in) appearence of Ian Brown as a wizard. The climactic scenes are a bit of a mess too, not ruined but careless. How does Harry know a secret passage under the Whomping Willow leads into the Shrieking Shack? And without explaining that his father was an Animagus why does Harry see a stagg and think his father came to save him and Sirius? Second time around why do we not see him conjure a Patronus stagg when we see things from his point of view? Seems as though when the script was written the Animagus plot was dropped except for the minimum needed to explain Peter Pettigrew but it was decided to have the Patronus stagg first time round to satisfy the book fans.
And some adult moments for the grown-ups? Opening the film with Harry 'playing with his wand' under the bed covers, looking at books? That'll do. And for slashtastic action, look very closely at the scene when draco and Harry meet for the first time in the film. Draco is so sizing Harry up and thinking 'my but you've grown Potter', I swear. They so need their own room in the Slytherin dungeons.
In summary, pretty to look at but otherwise largely disappointing. So maybe Harry Potter will be like Star Trek movies, each odd-numbered episode is shit.
