WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!After the first 10 minutes, this was my favorite film in the Harry Potter franchise. After sitting through the rest of it, however, it’s now tied for last place.
A major credit to the filmmakers is the sense of realism on display in this film. We’ve finally begun to break away from the cartoonish settings and the caricatures that the muggle and wizarding worlds had become in the first four films. We finally see some genuine overlap between the two and their co-existence has begun to become believable. Granted, this has a lot to do with the fact that Potter author J.K. Rowling crafted this overlap in the book the film is based on. But, those first 10 minutes were just marvelous and not all credit is due to Rowling.
The opening is bleak- Harry sits in an abandoned playground that is showing its signs of age. The grass is all dried up because it’s the end of summer and it’s a hot one. The digital grading was also a nice touch- heightened yellow tones and a hint of graininess to the camera made the movie feel like high-grade indie stuff. It was just about perfect.
Finally, here was a Harry Potter I could believe in- a real boy stuck balancing a life in two worlds, neither of which is considerably friendly to him at the moment. For the first time I felt that both the Harry Potter character and universe could be real.
Then it all went awry.
One of the biggest issues plaguing this film is the pacing. The fourth installment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, took a 600+ page book and turned it into a 2 hour and 40 minute movie. It gutted some of the extra stuff and kept more or less only the meat and potatoes. It worked very well.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tries to take a book that’s nearly 300 pages longer than its predecessor and make the movie version 30 minutes shorter. It makes the action a little too frenetic. Instead of feeling like I was walking through the story, I got the sense that I was being pulled through at a needlessly faster pace. The first two Potter films were longer, so why can’t that be the case here? We’re dealing with an ultimately more interesting and engaging story than those early films, so why the rush? This could have been a three-hour film and no one would have noticed.
Here again, however, some blame is due to be directed at author J.K. Rowling. The story is a sprawling hodge-podge of subplots that never really goes anywhere nor adds up to a satisfying A-plot. Aside from being the target of new Headmistress Delores Umbridge, Harry faces no real central conflict. In place of a titular challenge (the Order of the Phoenix is only relevant for about half of the story) we are treated with an irrationally moody Harry Potter. He is bitter at his friends for something that was completely out of their hands to begin with, and he is mad at the world which doubts him and constantly ridicules his true account that Voldemort is back.
Umbridge hides the fact that she’s out to get Harry until the very end, so she fails as a central villain. Outside of awkward teenage romance and haunting nightmares (neither of which are original to begin with) this story has little going for it. Ultimately it feels like a formulaic, paint-by-numbers Harry Potter adventure. There’s Harry dealing with issues, his friends trying to help, and Harry surviving another attack by Voldemort in the end.
Despite several shortcomings, credit must be given for the stunningly gorgeous sets used for the Ministry of Magic, however. The dark green bricks and lavish architecture was a real treat for the eyes. Sadly, this visual splendor was undone by the horrendous CGI character Grawp, a two or three story tall giant. It’s been five years since the first Lord of the Rings film came out and yet the effects in Harry Potter 5 come nowhere close to matching its quality. A shame for sure.
It is also very much evident that John Williams has backed out of doing the music for the series. While the music is said to be based off the themes he wrote for the first three films, some of the musical choices are just too noticeably not on par with either Williams’ work or the music from HP4. None of the score grabs you and holds you. In fact, some of the music in the end credits is best described as noise- jarring high-pitched electric guitars that made my ears hurt.
As far as advancing the seven-part story of Harry’s youth, the Order of the Phoenix feels a lot like filler. The fact that it is rushed filler makes it taste even less satisfying. A few things happen that certainly shake up the tale (the death of Sirius Black is sad because it means the loss of Gary Oldman and his amazing acting abilities), but little is added to the mix that takes you by surprise. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix feels like a tease of a tale, designed to kill some time before the real action begins in the final two books. From an emotional and expositional standpoint, we’re still very much at the same place we left off at the end of Goblet of Fire, except now people believe Voldemort is back.
Maybe all this is a sign that Harry Potter mania is starting to fizzle out, or maybe this just wasn’t a very well thought out production. Either way, this latest Potter flick has lost much of its magic.
RATING: 3.25 out of 5
1 comment:
First of all, I suppose it's tied with Chamber of Secrets in last place?
It's my least favorite too. But I think much of it has to do with Michael Goldenberg writing the film, instead of Steve Kloves.
I hope that David Yates steps up a notch in the last three films. I'm still unsure about hiring the same director in advance, although for sake of continuity it kind of makes sense.
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