Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

© 2004 Warner Bros.
Directed by: Alfonso Cuaron
Written by: Steve Kloves
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, David Thewlis, Gary Oldman
U.S. Theatrical B.O.: $249,358,727
cumulative critic score on Rotten Tomatoes: 88% positive (out of 212 reviews)

 

The general consensus is that this is the ‘best’ Harry Potter movie, but Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’s second act doesn’t start until the one hour and six minute mark. This kind of structural incompetence and testing of my patience is totally inexcusable in Hollywood and my DVD player, which means the first sixty-six minutes were soundtracked by me and movie companion Harris ruining the movie for Potter apologists and fellow movie companions Franke and Jane with sporadic “This fucking sucks!” The frequency of its inconsequential ‘action’ sequences reminded me of the Tom Hanks CG nightmare known as The Polar Express, which bored the cabin-pressured shit out of me on an airplane ride to Colorado last December with all its videogamey flying through tunnels and other duodenal feats of diversionary plotlessness. In any case I haven’t read any of these stupid books nor seen any of the other stupid movies, save the first stupid one, the entire stupid contents of which I don’t remember.

So anyway when not mehhing and booing Harris and I were audibly stupefied by the thematic content of Azkaban, namely its xenophobic take on the serious black threat to global white capitalism, a neocon abstract villain personified here with the literally named Serious Black (Gary Oldman). Apologists Franke and Jane informed me and Harris (in response to our mutual “What the Fuck?”s) that the ‘Serious’ is in fact 'Sirius', but this fact, while admissible, is undercut by the lack of any textual support within the movie itself as well as the ‘fact’ that Jane has read every one of these bullshits and Franke thought the second Potter movie was ‘tight’ while also opining that the way good rom-com 13 Going on 30 was ‘awful’. Nor did they have an answer as to why the lone black kid wizard is appointed the resident house expert on the seriousness of Serious Black’s nefariousness, or why the only other black character with a speaking part is a disembodied shrunken Rastafarian head dangling from a rearview mirror.

But at some point the movie abandons its after school special on keeping the world safe for boring white kids and their multi-culti uncle tom brethren in favor of a conflation of Oedipus and the onset of secondary sex characteristics. Total pussy Harry is saved from horror (I forget what exactly) by what he assumes for some reason is his dead father, whose apparition sprays its white magic seed[1] all over Harry’s cowering face. It’s only later through some unexciting something or other that we realize that it is Harry himself, traveling back in time, who saves his own earlier ass by successfully beating off for the first time: he strokes his wand and blows his load so hard that his white magic obliterates anything not totally fucking stupid within a 2.40:1 anamorphic radius. Meaning that Harry and his stupid fucking friends live to see another day, a day in which everyone in the entire most boringest school ever runs outside to see Harry’s new pubes and adult-looking cock in the form of his deluxe edition replacement broomstick. For those who assert that Harry’s two-handed and proud grappling of the ‘broomstick’ between his legs isn’t an overt reference to something penile and pubescent, I refer you to the recalled Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 vibrating broomstick and the Amazon.com customer reviews (since removed) thereof, some of which are still available for perusal here.

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[1] Perhaps this white seed is the “enormously pleasing essence of the Potter books” [italics mine] that Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times is referring to in his review?

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© 2006 Sinlechuga / Dan Hoy