This is the First Harry Potter 3 Movie review.

  Thanks to my job I got to see an early rough cut of the upcoming Harry Potter 3. 

Hands down this movie is the best of them all.  It doesn’t look or feel like the first two film at all which is weird because the entire cast is back, save a new Dumbledore.  Maybe that’s the first reason why I feel that this movie is different.  The new guy plays Dumbledore very differently.  I’m not saying it’s bad, not at all, but it’s noticeably different.  Personally I think I like this new guy better though I think many fans will feel sentimental towards Richard Harris’ departure. 

I wont go into the entire plot because I’m sure that fans will already know the book page by page.  I’ll just comment on a few things here.

The beginning starts with Harry back at his aunt and uncle’s house, as usual.  His uncle’s sister, Aunt Marge, comes to stay and harasses Harry about his parents the first night or so she’s there and he accidentally blows her up.  The beginning of the film’s special effects were completed and it looks really cool.  So Harry runs away thinking he’s now an outlaw of some sort, and he accidentally hails this large purple bus.  The bus is pretty cool.  It’s larger in the interior than the exterior makes it seem.  There are beds, a staircase up to the second floor and more.  And once again, we find ourselves at Diagon Alley where we meet Cornelius Fudge.  I’m not sure what the final cut of the film is going to be, but it definitely wasn’t as rigid and fast paced as the first two were at times.  The beginning is really the only part of the film where if you blink you miss a scene.  Within ten minutes he’s at Diagon Alley and Ron and his friends are there to greet him and he hears rumors of a deranged killer who escaped from the wizarding prison called Azkaban.  Now I read the books a bit a long time ago with my children and I recall that the Weasely’s don’t arrive until later, but for time I guess, they cut that out and they’re already there under “coincidence.”  The Weasley parents have a lot more to do with the story this time.  And so after a brief stay at Diagon Alley and the hotels, Harry and all of them are escorted to the train station to go back to Hogwarts.

There they have their first encounter with the Dementors.  Now let me tell you, the Dementors are freakin’ cool as all heck!  A lot of people said that they look a lot like the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings, and they do have similarities, but I wouldn’t say they look alike at all.  The best example I can give of this is that the Dementors are the cousins or maybe nephews of the wraiths.  My one friend said that they made an effort to differentiate them from Ringwraiths.  Their hoods for example, are different.  And they float across the ground as I saw later in the film.

Harry goes into a sort of seizure like spell.  Now here’s where it gets a bit interesting.  We hear all these voices as we’re watching Harry looking into the hood of the dementor, and then a sort of fog rolls over and we see blurred images.  It’s definitely a tad freaky.  My friend said that they’re working around it to maintain a PG rating, which they’ll likely get.  But there’s a new teacher there that helps Harry up and soon they’re back at Hogwarts.

Now we’re already off to a weird start because the beginning really is a bit dark.  I was told that after music and a few more final cuts, the tone will be lightened up a bit more.  They added some humorous elements into the film that I was told aren’t in the book (I can’t remember because it’s been almost three years since I picked up a copy).  They’re trying to really make this a mystery-type movie since we never see Sirius Black until the end nor do we really get to see the Dementors.  So it’s really about that threat coming from something you can’t see that’s really appealing in this movie, at least that’s what my friend said as we watched it.

Let’s see, Hogsmeade was wonderful.  They really did a nice job with it.  I honestly didn’t get to see many portions of Hogsmeade though.  There was a scene where Harry is under the invisibility cloak and he assaults Malfoy and his gang, but my friend said that they are really considering cutting it out to speed the film along.  It’s not my friends decision, though, he/she just does what they’re told from the powers that be.

The Quidditch scene is actually amazing this time around.  I think it’s because there’s a sense of real danger when the Dementors attack Harry.  It’s a really cool scene because, like the rest of the film, it’s dark.  It’s rainy as all heck.  My friend said that they cut out most of the Quidditch stuff from the book to save time.

This made me ask why so much was taken out this time around.  My friend said that the director felt that telling chapters verbatim wouldn’t do the movie or the book justice.  Instead, they are going for the overall theme of the book which I’m told is growing up and this internal enemy stuff.  It sounds deep, but really the movie is easy to follow.  Another guess why the movie is cut down a bit is because Warner Bros. wants to get it in and out quicker for fans.  I also asked about why Harry Potter 4 is only being treated as one movie and my friend said that they heard some gossip about being terrified of another disaster like the Matrix films.  They were shot back to back and released within a few months of each other and not many people went to see the second part, so WB might be thinking its just not worth it and that fans will show up all the same.

Anyways, I’m not going to spend all the time going over the details but the only real classroom type story that is featured here is the Magical Creatures class and the Dark Arts class.  There isn’t too much with the Magical Creatures class.  Malfoy gets hurt by this big bird that I can’t remember what it’s called.  The special effects aren’t all in for that yet.  My friend said they are still working on the wings.  The Dark Arts class is really focused.  This helps compliment the Harry-Snape conflict that is very strong in the movie.  I guess it’s because it has a lot to do with the overall story.

Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney is just hilarious!  I couldn’t stop laughing.  She plays it just like its written.  You’ve got a very dramatic woman who jumps at every little scare that comes by her.  She’s nothing but funny in the film.  She is definitely the comedy relief.  They really add her in after the darker moments to keep the comedy up.

They also dropped a couple storylines in this movie because there’s just too much.  They really focus on the Harry-Snape relationship, the Sirius Black aspect and touch a little on the Time Turner thing, pretty much stuff that helps the plot go along.  Very little about the pet named Buckbeak (yeah, that’s the name) being held on trial.  It’s in there on a side note, actually.

The finale’ of the movie is a good 40 minutes of the movie.  The coolest part of the movies as a whole all around.  I remember the original book dragging on and on as they reveal all this information about Harry and the traitor in the Shrieking Shack, but they cut a huge amount of that out.  We find out who the traitor is (not going to post too many spoilers here), and then we’re hauled out by Snape and the others.  The Dementors attack, and Snape tries to save the day, although too late, and it’s up to Harry to save them all.

The time turning sequence in the end of the movie is pretty imaginative.  Sirius is saved in an interesting way, and the movie really ends on a foreboding that foreshadows what I’m sure are key points for books 4 & 5, much more than the other movies really did. 

There are also a couple of cool flashback scenes in the movie dealing with younger kids playing the adults.  They tend to be my favorites, and there are even flashback sequences regarding harry’s parent’s deaths.  They will give fans some inside information I bet on just what happened.

So that’s just a bit of a review.  I didn’t want to go all in depth because I’m sure all the Harry fans will just be going yeah I already know that.  Overall, the movie is darker, and the plot and pacing of the film is MUCH MUCH better.  It’s eerie and spooky at times and really brings out the whole mythology that the writer made.  There are some really dark moments in the film, though, and so I’m wondering how dark the movies will be when we get to book five?  I haven’t read book five yet, but I’ve heard a lot about it.

Also speaking of which, my friend says that they are already moving fast with plans for book five, by hoping to lock down a director sometime in the later summer.  I asked if there was any news on how the fifth book would be treated just as I thought, my friend said that she heard it would only be one movie, but that’s totally not official.  That’s gossip even from those of us who work on films to a degree.

The kid actors are amazing.  Hermoine is definitely the better of the trio this time.  She’s got some womanesque traits to her now on how she holds herself.  Harry is a bit angrier and confused.  Some of the parts reminded me of that movie Thirteen that came out a while back.  No chain smoking or tongue piercings though, just the teenage angst that we all face.

My friend promised that they’ll try to get me in to see a more final cut of the film later, though I’m wondering if this scoop will make it harder for me to do so?

Overall, its by far the best movie of the series.  There’s no doubt about it in my mind that fans will go nuts over this film.  Warner Bros. has handled this film franchise delicately and it shows here.

Bobman

Ps – the final time is clocked in at about 140 minutes from what I saw.  I know other places have started quoting the final run time, but I don’t know what they’re saying.  But the version I saw is roughly 140 minutes long.  And I’m also told that there’s an extra clip at the end of the movie.