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The Prisoner of Azkaban is the third installment in the Harry Potter series of adventures that starts out with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) spending his summer with his relatives. However, he quickly gets himself in trouble when he turns his aunt into a giant balloon and is forced to run away from home. Suddenly he is picked up by a purple triple-decker bus that whisks him away to a secret inn called the Leaky Cauldron where he meets his classmates Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). While staying at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry learns that there is a murderer out on the loose called Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) and that he’s coming after him. However a new semester at Hogwarts, a school for the magically gifted, is about to start and Harry is going to have to figure out this mystery in between his classes.

It is quite difficult to gauge the quality of child acting. The range of emotions for Harry and his school pals varies from happiness, to being concerned, to being scared, and then being happy again. Then again you can’t expect great dramatic performances from a movie made for kids. Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson were fairly believable in their respective roles and were not at all annoying so I would have to say that they were pretty darn good. The professors at Hogwarts are played by a long lineup of famous British actors. It quite sad to see them waste their talent on such small walk-on parts, but I guess it’s just part of the business.

“Effects galore” is an understatement for this movie. Hogwarts is filled with magical things including flying broomsticks, ghoulish beasts called Dementors, a half-horse and half-eagle creature called a Hippogriff, and paintings that come to life just to name a few. All of these things look pretty darn cool on the big screen. Memorable scenes include Harry taking a wild ride on the Hippogriff, the main hall at Hogwarts filled with all those floating candles, and the menacing Dementors that seem to be so fond of Harry throughout the movie. Another point of interest are the posters and scrolls in this movie. Instead of having just pictures and text, they actually have a short video which shows the information to you.

Let me start out by letting you know that I am not a Harry Potter fan. I have not read any of the books and have not seen the first two movies so my opinion is relatively unbiased. While the movie is visually stunning, I had some trouble following the story. Maybe it’s because I’m not familiar with the characters or settings, but I found the first half of the movie to be a bit jittery as it sometimes randomly jumped from one seemingly unrelated subject to another. Nevertheless, the second half is a solid action adventure packed with chills, thrills, and even a surprise ending. I also thought that it was pretty creative how director Alfonso Cuarón approached the subject of time travel in this movie, but I won’t say too much because it will give away the ending. In conclusion, fans of Potter old and young will truly enjoy this movie while fist time viewers like me will get a taste of the wild sensation that has been sweeping the world over the past few years.