So, I got all geeked and saw Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix. I guess I was hoping that this film would make a book that I mostly did not like into something that I might. I was wrong, very wrong. Mind you, I do lust for Daniel Radcliffe every maturing day. I do find Imelda Staunton to be a remarkable actress. Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, and Alan Rickman can handle their parts while sleepwalking. (I must note that Michael Gambon continues to grate my nerves with greater alacrity in each successive film.)

Is it possible to have excellent performances in a movie and still have a terrible film? In this case, yes. It’s just that the movie’s writers and director were simply not up to the task of cutting two-thirds of a novel’s content into a two-and-a-half hour film. I was feeling some form of senility while watching the film: Wait, this isn’t what happened in the book… I can’t remember exactly what it was that happened in the book, but this is wrong, I tell you, wrong! There will be some debate on whether this is as bad as the third film, but that’s a parlor game for geeks. It’s just kinda ho-hum and I felt sorry for those watching the film without having read the book since its pacing and editing is slipshod and mad-dash.

I think there were a lot of creative choices that were just stupid.

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Ms. Umbridge: What makes Ms. Umbridge one of the most memorable villains in literature (paraphrasing Stephen King) is that she is simultaneously ostentatiously well-kept, implicitly repulsive, and psychotically serene. She is also a bureaucrat, which in Rowling’s world, is evil yet entirely different from Voldemort’s. Most importantly, she hates Harry deeply and that laser-like hatred steers her arc perfectly, almost admirably, through the text. All this being said, what should not have happened in this film was the flippant way in which Harry’s “lines” are revealed and it should not have happened that all of Dumbledore’s Army were required to also write “lines” while Ms. Umbridge observes. This is a wrong-headed approach to portraying Ms. Umbridge’s nature. In the book, Harry spends most of the year being tortured by Ms. Umbridge and her lines. It is only found out very late. He isolates himself in this punishment and for the most part Ms. Umbridge reserves this punishment for Harry. This torture becomes a perverted bond between the two and I think that is one of the reasons why she is such a memorable villain. In our age, corporal punishment to children is morally wrong and this secret abuse exhibits what Rowlings wants us to think of her character extremely effectively. Making Umbridge a de facto Fascist was really a disappointment.

The shoes: You’re the director. You don’t want a children’s movie to end on a total downer. You want to lighten things up a bit with some spacey-smiled interaction with Luna. To underscore Luna’s retarded aphorisms, we see what I believe to be Luna’s shoes at the end of the film hanging from an arch. Directing 101: You should have exhibited them prominently earlier in the film (LIKE WHEN WE’RE INTRODUCED TO HER IN THE CARRIAGE AND NOT WASTE TIME TALKING ABOUT A NECKLACE!). I walked away thinking, “Why didn’t we see those ugly-ass shoes before? Seeing them now, I can tell you, I DON’T CARE ABOUT HER SHOES!

3D Effects: They were pointless. Did it make any real difference to see Harry flying at you or to have a flaming snake coming at you? Not for me, but then I’ve seen 3D effects before and the kiddies might not have.

The prophecy: Some time and thought should have gone into outlining or at least somewhat describing the prophecy’s importance. Anyone not reading the books had to be completely lost as to why it was so important to have and what was the consequence for it being shattered. Directing 101: Exhibit this discussion during the denouement speech with Dumbledore, nitwit.

The budget: After watching the HBO junket-fest, I was disappointed to see so many of the sets rehashed. I was also disappointed in seeing that damned covered cat-walk used constantly and that the catwalk is actually a giant blue-screen effect. C’mon Warner Bros, this franchise makes money like crazy. Spend a little money on appropriately needed special effects LIKE: In the book, the statues at the Ministry of Mysteries are animated during the duel. You exhibit the statues repeatedly and they just sit there! Couldn’t you borrow the same concept from the first movie to animate them? ALSO (off-topic since it’s from the last movie but I’m noticing a trend of stinginess): In the Goblet of Fire, what happened to the Sphinx and the spider in the labyrinth? Did you really have to resort to the special effects of lashing bushes from The Shining?

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I’m sure this movie’s project was not to embitter me, but they did a magnificent job ruining my drive to see Harry Potter movies on the big screen opening day.