HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Warner Bros
Grade: C
Directed by: David Yates
Written By: Michael Goldenberg, novel by J.K. Rowling
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick
Davis, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson, Richard Griffiths, Jason Isaacs, Gary
Oldman, Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson
Screened at: Regal Court St., Brooklyn NY, 7/11/07
Opens: July 11, 2007 It has become commonplace for critics to argue against the overuse of computer generated images in favor of the human touch; i.e., inter-relationships of people who don’t quite lead lives like us but who give the audience the impression that they’re just folks engaging in human conflict. In the case of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” the reverse is true. The special effects, discreet in usage, come as a relief to the endless, unfocused chatter and the introduction of far too many characters even in a film that’s well over two hours in length. The strictly human segments of the movie are a crashing bore, while the acts of wizardly sans the momentously overproduced battles of the previous four Potter yarns are just dandy, just down-to-earth enough to convince the audience that maybe the vaporous steam, a mammoth-size human being, and a few giant creatures could be created in your middle-school science lab. As the title character, Daniel Radcliffe, now eighteen years of age, together with his sidekick Rupert Grint in the role of Ron Weasley to be eighteen in a month, has lost his juvenile cuteness and may be considered “old” by the small fry who swear by the series. Emma Watson’s Hermione Granger, now just seventeen, looks about the same as in last year’s version. What the kids in the audience may take out with them halfway through–especially when Harry has enjoyed his first prolonged kiss, is that there’s something mysterious and wonderful (or icky and wet) coming for them during adolescence. This “Harry Potter” with its dark tones looks as though it cost a mint to produce, with David Yates coming aboard after helming TV episodes of “State of Play,” “The Bill,” and others. Yates adapts a screenplay by Michael Goldenberg, scripter of the 2003 version of “Peter Pan,” the 1997 “Contact,” and “Bed of Roses” featured a decade ago. Condensing J.K. Rowling’s longest book into the shortest Potter film has come at a price. Characters come into the screen at a furious pace, even as the abridgement has chucked some of the little elves and ghosts of previous pics. This time Harry has the role of a student-teacher of Wand 101 at the Hogwarts School, though not until he has been tried and cleared of charges that he had used a forbidden curse outside of school grounds–producing a witness that an emergency attack by two Dementors required the action. Harry announces to a disbelieving body of adults that the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has returned, determined to do damage Harry’s rep and, more important, to displace school’s headmaster, Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). When the laughably intense, pink-clad Dolores Umbridge(Imelda Staunton), as villainous as your worst teacher, takes over at the helm, she takes umbrage at Harry’s antics, ruling with a patronizing, hostile smile and an iron fist. As she becomes increasingly hard-nosed, disallowing students from studying additional curses and dumping teachers, she sets the stage for a confrontation with the ousted headmaster, Dumbledore. Harry Potter, round glasses proclaiming him as more of a nerdish-looking intellectual than a Varsity letterman, turns victoriously heroic in the climactic payoff, Harry’s youthful team versus Voldemort’s right-hand man, the blond-haired Lucius Malfoy (perennial villain Jason Isaacs), who is aided by the psychotic Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) in a struggle over possession of a prophetic globe. While “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” has its share of mostly down-to-earth magic, the movie, perhaps because of sequel fever, is missing the novelty of previous works. This “Potter” does not come close to matching the best of the series, Mike Newell’s “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”–which had already taken us deeper into the characters' minds and the darkness of the Wizarding World. “Phoenix” then, with all its pretense as a work of more mature darkness and depth of characterization, is nothing really new, nor does it possess anything to uplift the spirit. Rated PG-13. 138 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
