Way, way, way too serious. Not fun – and not *British*! Other than the butterbeer, all the charm is bleached from this film and we spend the whole time drowning in mythos with Tom Riddle hiding his soul and people looking at each other’s memories. And I have no idea what that whole business with Dumbledore drinking a the potion out of that shell in the cave was all about.
And after 5 movies of Snape seeming like a bad guy but actually being good – turns out he was actually bad this whole time? And it doesn’t even get sprung on us – we learn it at the beginning? Like it was an off-season decision or something?
It’s fun to see you decided to watch (or is it re-watch?) the HP series. You also managed to use the word poppycock in one review. I need to use it somewhere right after I figure
out what it means. I agree that Azkaban is the best film of the series so far, but I do love them all. Admitedly that has a lot to do with how much I enjoyed reading the books
(a couple of times each too!). This will sound like a cliche, because it is, but to get the full enjoyment of this epic you should spare some time and read the books. Better yet
and easier listen to them on audio on the British version as narrated by Stephen Fry. His reading is really fantastical and gives every character a dimension of it’s own.
The films do a good job of squeezing as much plot in there as possible, but, as you can probably tell, lots of finer details and backstory are missing or glossed over.
Read the frickin book