Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix

I used to love Harry Potter. I really did. When I was in 4th grade I swore I was going to beat WB to making a Harry Potter movie with myself as the lead, Kyle Klicka as Ron and Sarah Lansbergh as Hemoine. Sadly that never happened, but I still loved the books... until I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix. "What the hell is this?" I thought while reading it. "Harry is emo... drastic changes in character, style, this isn't a Harry Potter book." It truly felt like those teenage vampire novels that are clearly trying to be the next Interview with the Vampire. I got halfway through the book and never opened another page again. Can this movie correct all the problems that existed with the book?

We begin this movie with Harry still getting his emo on, when a dementor attacks him and his cousin. After the attack, Harry is expelled for using magic. He is taken in by the order of the pheonix, which is a group of people who believe that Voldemort has come back and is willing to fight him, but the ministry of magic doesn't believe he is back and are calling Harry and Dumbledore liars. Harry returns to school where there is a new teacher and the ministry is taking over the school. These changes are lead by Dolores Umbridge, the new defense against the dark arts teacher. I don't want to give away too much, but if you have read the book, you know what happens.

Since people have already made up their mind about the acting in these films, I bet, I'm only going to cover 5 peole: Ralph Finnes, Gary Oldman, Daniel Radcliffe, Imelda Stouton and Michael Gambon. A lot of people complained and bitched when Gambon took over the role of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I must admit, I was one of the people who felt he was too aggressive and too lively to play Dumbledore... then. In this movie, I could not picture anybody else as Dumbledore. No matter how perfect Richard Harris was as Dumbledore, I could not see him kicking ass and bringing to the role what Gambon did in this movie. It is the first time we have actually seen Dumbledore use hardcore magic, and it is awesome and something I would not have believed from Harris' Dumbledore. Gary Oldman returns as Sirius Black, and you can really tell that he loves Harry so we really feel for him by the time the end comes around. Radcliffe does a fine job in bringing Harry to a more "I HATE EVERYONE" place. It made for a much smoother transition between the last movie and this than between the books, but sadly he cannot topple Ralph Finnes as Voldemort. He rocks, and god damn it, I want more Voldemort. Finnes is absolutely perfect and incredibly evil in this movie. My favorite shot in the movie is simply him standing in that all black suit at the train station. Finnes has always been a good villian, and while it is not as good as his role in Schindler's List, it is better than him in Red Dragon (I really liked him a lot in that movie). Imelda Stouton really steals the show in this though, at the same time she is funny and down right evil. She is so perfect and I did truly love her in this movie. Damn she is evil... but not as evil/good as Ralph Finnes.

While all the acting and such was good, all my complaints that existed when I was reading the book, existed with the movie, but to a lesser degree. Emo Harry is just not fun to watch, and almost totally unneccessary because by the end he isn't emo and he has learned the value of frienship... which has happened before in the books. Nothing really happens to add anything to the universe until the 3rd act. Really, if that is all that was in this movie, it would have been much much better. Truthfully, that is the biggest problem with the movie, nothing really important happens until the final moments of the film, which are great moments (especially in IMAX 3D, that is how I saw it).

This is the first thing of David Yates that I have seen, and I must say that it was a good directorial debut (for me to see.) He creates an apporpriately dark universe and combines different aspects and looks that the other directors have included. In the first 2 movies Columbus stuck exactly with the book, so the costumes didn't change, Curon then decided to go with an extremely naturalistic stance to it and had them wearing their wizarding clothes almost none of the time, Nichols brought symbolism to the story, and Yates was perfect in tying in all their styles together. They wore their uniforms when appropriate, and the symbolism in the death eaters is still there, but less severe. My one problem is that once in a while he would chose to use handheld camera very badly. It took me out of the scene, but luckily he would bring me right back in.

In all, even though this seems like a fairly good review, this movie felt pretty mediocre to me. I did not leave with a sence of excitement or waiting to see what happens in the 6th movie. I will say this though: if you liked the first 4 Harry Potter books and not this one, check the movie out because it is much better than the book. I know there will be die hard fans being pissed off at me, but it is the truth.