My wife, our 4 year-old daughter and I enticed my parents to watch the baby and darted the luxuriously short distance to our brand new cineplex (stadium seating, all that new crap), right here in burgeoning Aurora, to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and other than my lap falling asleep after two hours of hosting a not insubstantial tyke (she actually fell asleep about 7/8 through, not out of boredom - she kept declaring "I love this movie," even through the scary parts, which were fearsome indeed - but out of sheer fatigue: no nap, we were at the 8:30 viewing, her poor little brain and body just shut down), I declare the experience an unqualified triumph.

I don't recall EVER going back to a movie in the theater just because, but my first thought after Azkaban concluded with Harry's square-jawed, now clearly teenaged face, frozen in exhaltation on the screen, was that this was a movie I wouldn't mind seeing again, in the near future, just because I liked it and want to sit there with a vague smile on MY face for two hours again. And while I like movies as much as the next guy (unless the next guy is the Duke or Alan Dale or Matt Paprocki or some other damn cine-know-it-all), I rarely go to the theater (two young children, cable, DVD, hectic schedule, too far to go - although with the new Auroraplex, the travel time to the nearest farmer's-market-o-film has been reduced from 15 minutes to about 5, 4 if i make all the lights in really good weather).

So, who knows, if I can find the time, we may go back - and that's really saying something.

I won't bore you with the facts of the story since if you care you already know (and these reviews give all that), so I'll just give a few reactions.

First, as most reviewers have said, this is by far the most satisfying Potter film thus far as a cinematic experience. Being an iconclast I haven't read any of the books (he said proudly and defiantly), so my knowledge and relationship with the magical Potter world is strictly through the movies, and owning both DVDs and having a 4 year-old, I have seen the first two many times and am very familiar with that world.