Ouch! “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is like a stab in the back. At first the viewer is shocked and hurt, then disgusted, and finally just mad. The third Harry Potter movie is an abomination.

This film is supposed to be about Harry Potter at wizard school. He believes he is being pursued by the madman who helped kill his parents but we find out that the madman is really a good guy and chasing after the man who actually betrayed Harry’s parents. This is about as far as the script goes. We don’t fully understand why the betrayal of Harry’s parents was so bad or any of the things Harry learns about his father, leaving out the parts that were so good in the book.

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron), and Emma Watson (Hermione) star. They act well with the script they have and are not to blame for my opinion of the film as a whole. The sets are quite good, but I would have liked less computer animation and more puppet effects and stunt doubles.

I don’t like the director’s choice of costumes, either. Instead of wearing their school robes, students wear jeans and t-shirts. This upsets me because a characteristic of almost all wizards is that they don’t like muggles’ (non-magic people’s) clothes, and it breaks with the established costumes of the previous movies. Why change?

The only excellent aspect of this movie is the music. John Williams is a brilliant composer whose credits include the “Star Wars” films, “Jaws” and “Jurassic Park.” The music, though, cannot be credited to director Alfonso Cuaron because Williams wrote it for directors of the other Harry Potter movies.

The script is poorly written, and the scenes don’t flow. In the book Harry receives his new broomstick in the middle of the tale, while here it seems as if someone realized at the last minute they need the broomstick for the next movie, so they stick it in at the end. The whole movie seems choppy. I don’t see how someone who hasn’t read the books would understand what is happening since many parts that explained the story have been cut.

It is always difficult to make a good movie based on a great book. I thought it wasn’t possible with the Harry Potter series, since the first two movies were nothing special. I was proven wrong when I saw the fourth movie. This leaves no excuse for the third one to be this bad. If you are thinking about buying this film, buy the book instead.