Harry Potter 5 Movie Review

Last night I went out to the (still) new Bridgeport Theater to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I really like that theater, albeit a little crowded at peak times.

So this is the 5th installment of the Harry Potter series, coming off a darn good 4th. I thought Goblet of Fire was good, so I was looking forward to seeing this one. This is the first book of the series I didn't read, but I don't think that should have mattered, as any movie adapted from a book should still aim to be good in its own right, but as you'll see in my review, maybe it did.

This film took a deeper look at the characters of this franchise, and in particular, Harry. It tried to show that he had grown up and changed. The only problem is, it's a character study about a boy with no character. What I mean is, Harry Potter has never developed his own character, it's always the people around him or their actions, or stuff that happened before the first book, that develop it. He's never really done anything, but he's built into this heroic figure through what others tell him and other do. He's just the innocent little boy who has no idea what he can do, and everyone has so much respect for him and he doesn't get why, and neither do we, so I think that has been really effective getting an audience to care about him. But I think he, the character of Harry Potter, is pretty empty by himself, thus making this character study pretty boring.

The whole movie didn't have the same "Harry Potter feel" to it either. You'll know what I mean when you see it, but there was very little magic throughout, we never got a sense of the world they live in, the way wizards have their own little world, and the huge size and luster and glory of Hogwarts was totally absent. When their was magic, the 7 minutes of it in the whole movie, it was magicians throwing magic energy balls at each other, which I thought was really lame, or it was Dumbledore and Voldemort facing off for about 45 seconds. That should have been at least a 5 minute scene. The only cool part about it was when Voldemort used their combined magic, shattered all the glass in the whole hall, and threw it at Harry and Dumbledore. But really, there was very little action, or real climax, in this "fantasy" movie.

Other gripes: I thought the directing was full of itself, I thought Voldemort was one of the weakest characters (let Ralph Fiennes give a speech and do some acting), I thought they underutilized the great actors like Fiennes, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, and Michael Gambon (Dumbledore), and I thought there were a lot of cop-outs tying up loose ends.

Likes: I thought the Voldemort glass shattering was great, I thought they lady they got to play Umbridge, the new defense against the dark arts teacher, was perfect in that role, as was the girl who played Luna Lovegood, and the sweeping shots of Hogwarts are always cool looking.

On the Reganometer I give this movie a 4 out of 10.