Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Review

One notable thing about the Harry Potter book series (and the film series that echoes it) is that as the children get older, the themes and plots get more mature as well. As the children grow into young adults, news of the return of Lord Voldemort and an impending war leads several students at Hogwarts to train in an army to fight- very serious subject matter indeed. But the Ministry of Magic, run by a paranoid and delusional Cornelius Fudge and represented at Hogwarts by the sugar-coated, pink-clad authoritarian and disciplinarian Dolores Umbridge, refuses to acknowledge the obvious return of Voldemort, sees the formation of a fighting force for good as a threat to its own power, and wields everything within its power in order to stop it.

One inherent problem with the Harry Potter films is that, to be good feature films, they must stay within a certain allotted amount of run time, though the books in the series have gotten progressively longer and longer. Thus, every consecutive film has had to cut more and more material from the book, and the Order of the Phoenix cut so much that it will leave viewers who have not read the book exasperated and bewildered. The Order itself- the very title of the film- is introduced so very briefly that all the viewer knows of it is the name, a vague idea of its membership, and the basic principle that guides it.

The films' shooting is an artistic masterpiece, the acting is noteworthy, the characters are intriguing, and the theme is noble- but sadly, all this excellence is lavished upon a plot that cut so much fat from the original story that it ended up a skeleton. The viewer will be dazzled by the artistic triumph of the film, but only dazed and confused by the story itself.