By Brandon Nolta
In a way, it’s too bad the Harry Potter films are hewing so close to the book titles. Although the latest, HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, has a nice enough title, it might be better to borrow a line from the Bard and call it “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” I know it’s already been done, but watch that Disney oddity sometime and tell me it couldn’t stand for some improvement.
But, I digress. It’s fifth year at Hogwarts, and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is still dealing with the stress of losing a friend to Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) at the end of the previous year. As the semester begins, Harry and his friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are beset by an increasingly distant Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), a public at large that doesn’t believe that “He Who Must Not Be Named” is back, and a Ministry of Magic that wants it to stay that way. Harry begins to suspect that his mood swings are a little more than teen angst, and when the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor (Imelda Staunton) appears with a mind-bogglingly cute collection of kitty plates and a desire to enforce conformity at all costs, it becomes clear to the teenage wizard that he needs to take action.
Throw in a love interest for Harry and one hell of a magic battle at the end, and you get a recipe for billions, as J.K. Rowling has discovered.
There’s much to like in this adaptation, but the overwhelming impression this reviewer got was of streamlining. The fifth book is — so far — the meatiest in the series, and there’s no way in hell anyone could get most of it in without a bucket of grease and a miniseries slot on HBO. The fact that Michael Goldenberg managed to write a coherent, intelligent screenplay that takes less than three hours ought to have earned him a bonus, but by necessity, much of the novel was sublimated and/or excised altogether. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but purists will scream.
More to the point, many of the supporting characters hardly appear at all. Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) barely makes a cameo, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) might as well have stayed home, and even Ron gets short shrift. Most of the movie falls on the shoulders of Radcliffe and Watson, who are generally considered the better actors of the teen cast, and
they handle the load nicely. Radcliffe in particular earns points for letting Harry go down a darker road.
Gary Oldman plays a rare sympathetic role as Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather, and Helena Bonham Carter has a blink-and-miss-it role as Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius’ evil cousin. Fiennes is his usual awesome self as Voldemort (and is obviously having a hoot), and Staunton makes an excellent example of the banality of evil.
As virtually every review of this film will point out (it’s actually required by the Warner Bros. contract, FYI), this film is quite a bit darker than its predecessors; death casts a long pall over this installment, and the events that transpire within don’t do anything to alleviate that. My 7-year-old daughter wasn’t too perturbed (although she’s grown up with the books and films), but younger kids may not get much of what happens, and the tone can be off-putting. There’s not a lot of violence (a good Quidditch game has more), but what violence there is counts, so be warned. For older kids and their parents, or fans of Mr. Potter and the gang, ORDER OF THE PHOENIX is a worthy addition to the canon.