Harry Potter 3

Today I spent a good portion of the afternoon watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. After dropping off my son at his grandmas for a few days (Yes, I went to this 'kid's movie' without my kid) I dropped my ferrets off with family and went to the theater for over two hours of entertainment.

It's been some time since I've read the book on which this movie was based, but it seems to have followed the storyline very well. The special effects were very well done, especially the scenes involving the Hippogriff and the animagus and werewolf transformations.

While I don't think Hermine looks much older than she did in the earlier movies, I definitely see a difference in the ages of the actors playing Harry and Ron. I can see how they might get one more movie out of these same actors, but beyond that unless the books and the movies are released in a more rapid succession, I can't picture these same people looking the part for much longer. Each movie details roughly a year in the life of the characters, but it seems that the movies are coming out about every 2 years or so. And while there are 2 books already published which have yet to be the subject of movies, the author J.K. Rowling takes her time writing a quality product and is taking over two years to release each new book.

All in all, this was a pretty good movie. As a ferret owner, I found it a bit disturbing that the Hippogriff was fed dead ferrets several times throughout the course of the movie. However, the feeding scenes do promote realism and are very true to the original book, so I can't complain much. Certainly a mythical creature like a Hippogriff would be a meat eating animal, and I suppose a ferret would make as good a meat as any to such a beast.

For those of you who have kids, and those of you who still are, I'd certainly recommend this movie. Of course, be sure you've watched the first and second movies, and I recommend reading the books as well before seeing the movies. This lets your imagination run free. After watching the movies, it's easy to picture those scenes as Warner Bros showed them, rather than how you might imagine them yourself based on the detailed descriptions in the novels.