"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (2007) -- Initial Thoughts

Went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight. I don't think it's a good idea to go see one of these only about a week and a half after reading the book. Because this movie just felt really patchy to me. Yeah, the book is huge, so even a two-and-a-half-hour movie is going to have to skip a lot of stuff. The others have skipped lots. I was expecting this one to skip things. But it felt more disjointed than I was expecting. They did one or two good montages that sort of glossed through large chunks of the book, like Umbridge taking over Hogwarts decree by decree, and those were okay. It's when they messed with stuff just to cobble parts together that I got kind of mad -- like having it be Cho that revealed DA's meetingplace so that drives her and Harry apart instead of them falling apart more organically. It works, I guess, but it felt all wrong. And I really did want to see Firenze in at least the scene where he gets brought in as the new Divination professor.

At least Sirius got to be in this one more than one tiny floo-powder scene. I actually got more teared up over two of his earlier scenes with Harry than I did in the Department of Mysteries. (Being a bit vague here because certain people, namely my parents, have neither read the book nor yet seen the movie, but plan to).

But all in all, I felt like the last movie, Goblet of Fire, flowed much more smoothly. It was a shorter book, and I suppose had more of a central focal point, but I think this one could have been less jumpy.

Oh, and they radically changed the look of the Dementors, which I didn't much care for. And I was rather disappointed by the wizarding duel in the Dept. of Mysteries between the Order and the Death Eaters -- too much swooshy special effects and too little real people dueling.

But the casting was, as usual, superb. Of course, the main three are brilliant, and the professors and other students at Hogwarts. Fred and George Weasley were particularly amusing. Jason Isaacs just gets creepier and creepier as Lucious Malfoy. The only off-note for me was Helena Bonham-Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. She's good at being wacked-out and evil, but she seemed a little too... cute. And her hair was much too bee-hive or something, just unbelievable. I wanted her to be more mad Ophelia and less fairy-tale-witch.

But it got one Warhead, or maybe one and a half, as I did once consider getting another one out of my pocket, but then got interested in what was going on again and never got around to eating a second Warhead.