Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

In a Nutshell: Somewhat disappointing to this lover of the book, particularly as this is my favorite book in the series. Worth seeing, I guess, but not as good of a movie (story-wise) as the second one.

Quick Plot: Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban prison with one thought on his mind: kill Harry Potter.

In Detail: I know, I am dreadfully late with this review, but I figure anyone who really wanted to see it would have seen it anyway, and anyone who wasn't sure probably wouldn't have been persuaded to see it based on my rather poor review of the film, so in the long run, it probably didn't make any difference, unless you were dying of curiosity regarding my opinion of the film. :p You got all that? LOL Anyway, as I mentioned above, I found the film, overall, to be disappointing. Visually, I liked the film better, and the acting itself was better (hey, the kids are getting older and they have more experience now; I *hope* they're getting better). But with all of the edits they had to/chose to make to the story itself, it seemed to fall a bit flat. This perception is not helped by the fact that this is far and away my favorite *book* in the series, so it had a lot to live up to for me to be happy. However, given that DH (a non-reader) was even a little confused after seeing the film and I had to explain several things (including the tell-tale question "so *what* was up with those Dementor things?"), this tells me that the filmmakers did not succeed in their objectives of relaying the story well, at all. (For heaven's sake! You should know all about the Dementors by the end of that book, I mean movie.) They also took out a few points that I feel were totally key and that made the story "magical." The book has a lot of thinking/internal type elements, so I realize it was difficult to translate to the screen. Not a bad movie, but not as great as it could have/should have been.

Will I Buy It? Seeing as we already have the first two, I'm leaning towards yes, but if the films don't start improving from this point (and I find it hard to believe they can, since they intend to chop down the massive book 4 into a single 2 hour film), I will find it difficult to continue to purchase them. That is, of course, until I decide that my child needs a new film to watch, because I'm tired of seeing the same ones over and over and over and.... :)