Fans love POA but critics are mixed -
Summary:
Some like it but some dont.
Article:
Thanks to Wizardnews
Quote:
Movie critics disagree about whether Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is better or worse than the original two.
Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times concludes: "Not quite. It doesn't have that sense of joyously leaping through a clockwork plot, and it needs to explain more than it should. But the world of Harry Potter remains delightful, amusing and sophisticated."
Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times argues that the film doesn't really come alive until the final hour. "The key difficulty that has to be overcome ... is that there is too much standard Harry Potter stuff the film seems compelled to include, material that both swells the running time to that counterproductive two hours and 21 minutes and detracts from the story's intrinsic drama."
Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post gives the film its most negative review by a major newspaper critic, writing: "This is one long sit, made all the more so by a turgid story, a dour visual palette and uninspiring action."
But A.O. Scott in the New York Times writes: "This is surely the most interesting of the three Potter movies, in part because it is the first one that actually looks and feels like a movie, rather than a staged reading with special effects."
Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star confesses that he found the original Potter movie "drab" and passed over the second film completely, but he found the new film "visually imaginative ... glorious."
Christy LeMire observes for the Associated Press: "Purists may balk that this is an art-house version of Harry Potter -- and with any revered pop culture phenomenon, fans are likely to get riled about something. But Azkaban is by far the meatiest, most magical film in the series thus far."
Much of the credit for the artistic success of the new film is assigned to director Alfonso Cuarón. "By portraying its central characters more realistically as adolescents with an array of serious emotional issues -- and even putting them in more contemporary clothes in some scenes -- Cuaron makes the magic that much more magical," writes Lou Lumenick in the New York Post.
Mark Caro in the Chicago Tribune says that Cuarón "shakes the candy coating off of the franchise without violating its spirit."
And Joe Morgenstern concludes in the New York Post: "Alfonso Cuarón's style relies on trust. He trusts the intrinsic power of movie magic, and the eagerness that keeps kids scanning movie screens like astronomers searching the heavens for new stars."
Wizardnews