Despite gallant visual efforts, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” gets shackled by its inability to turn a great story into a big-screen masterpiece.

For a tale about spells, prophecies and other unexplainable phenomena, the third movie about Harry Potter, the little-wizard-that-could, lacks enough explanation to fully satisfy any viewer who has never read the book.

Likewise, those who have read the book — and know it to be one of the best thus far in the series — will despise the movie for its failure to bring out some of the finest elements of J.K. Rowling’s tale.

Twelve years after the fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the death of James and Lily Potter, one of the most loyal supporters of the dark lord has escaped from prison, and not just any prison. Sirius Black, one of the wizard world’s most ruthless criminals, has become the first to ever escape from Azkaban, a wizard prison guarded by grim reaper-like creatures known as dementors. Now Black may be after Harry to avenge Voldemort and restore his power.

Visually, the dementors are every bit like Rowling described them on page. They are black, shadowy and have hands that send chills throughout the theater. But it isn’t readily apparent why these cloaked beings are so frightening. The dementors steal a person’s happiness, feeding off the person’s pain. The worst punishment they administer is a kiss, which is used to suck the soul from a person. This fact that makes the creepies really crawl is not mentioned until the end of the movie.

Details aren’t a strong point of this movie, which makes it hard to compare to Rowling’s world where carefully woven together details make for exceptionally vivid reading. The Marauder’s Map, a tool Harry uses to determine where various people are within the walls of Hogwarts, was created by four wizards whose names appear on the front of the parchment: Mooney, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail. Whom these four mischievous young men are is never revealed in the movie, despite all of them playing major roles in the plot line.

The movie also fails to bring about the most real and relating theme of the story: jealousy. The story originally played a great deal off Snape’s envy of Harry’s father when they were growing up. It is hard to imagine why the truest element of teen angst was not included. The lack of emotions makes the characters one-dimensional, making them hard to relate to.

The only returning character whose personality blossoms is Hermione, played by Emma Watson. Watson, always believable as the know-it-all brat, allows her character to mature to a teenager who is agitated with life. Her formerly annoying character, dreadfully overacted in the first two movies, has grown-up, unlike Harry and Ron Weasley.

Gary Oldman, who plays Sirius Black, makes a great deal out of a role that didn’t receive as much screen time as it should have, ranging from a crazy murderer to a father figure. Oldman is one of few veterans among the main players of the film since Richard Harris, who played Professor Dumbledore in the first two films, died.

Michael Gambon, Harris’s replacement, fails to retain Dumbledore’s methodical demeanor. Gambon speaks too quickly, coming off as more of a mindless dote than the head master of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

In his Potter directing debut, Alfonso Cuar¢n tries to retain the magic the first two films cast upon audiences, but fails. Nothing lacks in the cinematography and other than Dumbledore, none of the characters regress, but the overall look has changed, and the adaptation strays too far from Rowling’s words for “The Prisoner of Azkaban” to have true Potter fans crying for more.