I liked the movie too (reasons why)

[dan]

"jjpandy" wrote:

> More outdoor scenes - loved it and the whomping willow made me 
laugh -
>  it had a personality!

Yes, it did, and Columbus gave the Flying Ford Anglia a personality 
too, moreso than the book. So, that wasn't just Cauron. Also, didn't 
Columbus add the uniform house crests that have become fan standard? 
There seems to be a fair bit of revisionist criticism mixed into some 
of the fan reviews. The movie critics are certainly more fond of this 
movie that the first too, that's for sure. See rottentomatoes.com.

> And the audience roared when the poor bird 
> became an explosion of feathers!

And the audiences I shared the movie with loved the shrunken head, 
all of the Knight bus, loved the "When did she get here? Did you see 
her come in?" lines of Ron, loved the animal-sound candies, loved 
Boggart!Snape, the talking heads at the Three Broomsticks, and so on. 
No, they didn't laugh at the immense Jack-In-The-Box, because it was 
intentionally transitional, was intended to be unsettling to us, but 
not to the wizard kids. It's a quotidian cinematic tool - make the 
audience aware of something foreboding before the characters pick up 
on it. By the way, I don't recall there being anything actually laugh 
funny in the Columbus travesties. Nor, in fact, do I recall there 
being anything creepy in his failed attempts. It was all just CG 
sugar. But Harry at the curb was as unsettling in the movie as in the 
book. What a memorable scene!

As well, thematically the book makes a point to state that the Muggle 
world is informed about Sirius' escape too, and the narrator does 
comment on the proximity of the magical and Muggle worlds, when Harry 
stays at the Leaky Cauldron. So, any overt reflection of Real World 
London in early movie scenes is canon. Perhaps the sense of grime 
some complained about is just that - downtown London. As I said 
before too, the train wasn't the Santa Claus Express, but a pretty 
fair example of a train running, say, between Manchester and London, 
like the one on which our author found her story.

Now I think of it, that's one thing all the movies haven't had to 
deal with yet at any length - the interface between magical and 
Muggle worlds. Though Rowling does write about it often, if briefly, 
she doesn't force the point, as yet. (I suppose, in a way, the 
offhand reference to Grindelwald and 1945 in Philosopher's Stone 
hangs like a Damocles' Sword, or something like that, over the books.)

> Only 2 things I really wished were in the movie: 1) some revelation 
> that Lupin was Moony (having read the book so much, I don't know 
how 
> easy it is to figure out)

This is a very interesting, and oft repeated, point that bears some 
examination, on a couple of levels. First, Cauron (and Kloves?) seem 
to be taking the lead from Jo herself, in leaving some things 
unquestioned, unexplained, unexplicated. The mysterious non-
appearance, or non-significance of the appearance of, Peter Pettigrew 
on the map, before Harry gets it, is completely inadequately 
discussed on the Lexicon. As is how the twins Weasley learned how to 
use it. Debates raged, and still rage, with each bit of information 
Rowling let slip, about the relationships of MWPP and their time at 
school and after. The very questions that perplex readers of the 
books are reflected in Cauron's (Kloves'?) handling of scenes. Looked 
at this way, it is a pretty fair reflection of the style of the books.

Second, what would be gained by this knowledge, thematically? Between 
the overheard conversation at the Three Broomsticks and the Shrieking 
Shack scene, and the conversation between Sirius and Harry just 
before the werewolf transformation, is there anything missing other 
than the connection to the map? Add Lupin's apparent knowledge about 
how the map works, and there's even less unspoken.

Dan, who loved the movie as cinema and as HP theorist and fan