Review: Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix

I went and watched on the opening night, because, yes, I am a Potter addict. But before you ask, NO I do not find a conflict between my Christian faith and my love of the Potter series. But that is neither here nor there for the purposes of this post. I am here today to write a review. Honestly I was impressed for the most part with this adaptation and applaud the endeavor in the first place. However, from this movie comes the problem with using a different director for each new film. You never know what you are going to get. This time unfortunately we got less than we bargained for in a variety of areas.

#1 Realizing it would have had to be a 4 hour movie to include everything, this director excluded far too many important parts that were in the book. If you had not read any of the books and were following the movies by them selves this movie would have done nothing but confuse you.

#2 THEY CHANGED THE BLOODY STORY! Honestly guys , leave what you have to on the cutting floor, but you CAN'T change the actual story. To name just a few things, they were not at all true to the book regarding Harry's failed relationship with Cho, nor with the cause of the DA's eventual discovery. The plot point with the Centaurs was not at all there or aloud to develop nor was the reason for Harry's initial coldness toward Ron and Hermione which would have I am sure seemed extremely odd on screen to someone who had not read the book prior. Most noticeable though was the complete transformation of the end scenes from the book in the Ministry/Dept. Of Mysteries. They absolutely ripped it apart and ruined what was one of the most entertaining and gripping pieces of literature yet written by Rowling. From their entrance to the death of Sirius, to the battle climax between Voldemort and Dumbledore, in a series of scene that seemed to last around 10 minutes there were maybe 60 seconds of actual book in there. Very, very, disappointing. Don't let them push you around next time J.K., it was right the way it was written.

As for character casting I wanted to mention that I appreciated very much the way Dolores Umbridge was portrayed by Imelda Staunton. Though she should have been a tad more toady looking in the end she did a wonderful job. Also big nods to Evanna Lynch as Lunna Lovegood who though introduced entirely improperly and who's character was not given any chance to properly develop as in the book, did a superb job. Though I do seem to remember Luna wearing some sort of x-ray specs or something throughout much of the story. Nods also to Natalia Tena as Tonks and Helena Carter as Bellatrix. Nice work on Grawp and the Thestrals, Grawp looked like Alfred E. Neuman which was kind of distracting, but the effect was still good. Not so much on the Centaurs and the Sirius face in the fire effect. Both have been done much better in prior movies and should have stayed that way. Also, my misgivings about story changing aside it was very cool to see the grown up wizards fight one another. That was the bread and butter of the whole final sequence and it just ended way to fast.

All in all as I originally said, an entertaining film, but this director/screenwriter, etc... let the story down to a certain extent and did not do it complete justice by any means.