Yet Another Review

[elfundeb2]

As always, I'm about a week behind everyone else and trying hard to 
catch up.   I *finally* saw PoA this past weekend.  I wrote up some 
quick thoughts the same night, but decided to read the reviews here 
before posting.  As a result, I know much of this is grossly 
repetitive.

I liked it, better than the first two, which is not saying much 
because I was extremely dissatisfied with their kids-action-film 
quality (especially CoS) which I thought was a waste of the fine 
adult actors they had assembled. Cuaron's film completely eliminated 
that bit of silliness, for which I was very grateful.  For example, 
I thought the Quidditch sequence was much better and more 
interrelated with the plot, and didn't seem to exist as an excuse 
for special effects, which is how I felt about PS/SS and CoS.

I thought the movie told the story quite well, keeping the essential 
elements; however, I felt the Shrieking Shack scene needed just a 
little more development before Remus and Sirius suddenly embraced.  
In retrospect, I think that what happened was that Lupin recognized 
Scabbers, but again I think I need a second viewing to confirm that.

I was not troubled by the loss of backstory though I'm surprised 
that it's never revealed who created the map. There was a golden 
opportunity to do that in the last scene when Lupin says "Mischief 
managed!" giving Harry an opening to ask how Lupin knew how to use 
the map.

I am, however, troubled by Hermione's punch. I saw no immediate 
justification for it, and even less for her subsequent statement 
that it felt good. I guess this is consistent with my abhorrence of 
bullying in any form, but it also seemed very OOC for Hermione to 
overreact like that since no attempt was made (as far as I can 
recall) to convey the stress Hermione was under in the books.

Though I did enjoy this one much more than CoS (I walked out of CoS 
very annoyed and vowed never to see it again) it was nevertheless a 
Kloves script.  As a result, some of the things that irritated me in 
CoS were still there -- the caricature of Ron as a scaredy cat 
(which IMO is inconsistent with the text except insofar as it 
relates to spiders) and giving virtually every line of his that 
shows him to be intelligent or brave to Hermione.  But Kloves seems 
determined to portray Sensitive Hero!Harry, Brilliant and Totally in 
Control!Hermione, and Silly Chicken!Ron.  I think it's to Cuaron's 
credit to have been able to set an overall tone that somewhat 
overcame Kloves script.

I'm also not fully convinced that the movie captured the Time-Turner 
sequence properly.  However, the text of PoA itself is not fully 
consistent in applying the principles of time travel, so I will 
withhold judgment until I've had another viewing. 

I loved Emma Thompson as Trelawney; I'm always so impressed with her 
acting gifts. I also found the other Emma less grating as Hermione 
as formerly. I also thought Fudge and Sirius were spot on (perhaps 
it helped here that I'm not generally a Sirius fan). Thewlis, 
however, failed to overcome my preexisting vision of how Lupin 
should look and act.  But the best character of all was Buckbeak.

I've been thinking of what the two things from Book 6 and 7 that 
were foreshadowed in the movie could be.  I agree very much that 
Lupin's description of Lily is likely one of the two.  I think that 
possibly the other bit of foreshadowing may derive from Ron's dream 
about the spiders.  Spiders are relevant to basilisk mythology (a 
dead basilisk is said to be a remedy against spiders), and I think 
Ron's fear of spiders, mostly played for laughs in Kloves' scripts, 
is symbolic of his own fear of failure (and of the twins), which as 
of the end of OOP, he has only just begun to master.

Debbie