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Saturday, August 22, 2015

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (2007)


I am not fond of this story, movie or book.  Spoiler alert:  my beloved Sirius Black dies.  Also, everything starts getting really grim and serious.  Voldemort is back, but most of the wizarding world refuses to accept the truth, and that both angers and frustrates me.  Throw in Delores Umbridge as a child-torturing usurper, and I'm pretty unhappy through the entire thing.  But at least the book has lots and lots of Sirius in it.  The movie shunts him off into a corner.


In fact, there are very few things I enjoy about this movie.  Harry's emotional connection to Sirius is all but sidelined, we spend most of the time fleeing from Important Plot Point to Important Plot Point, and by the time Sirius falls through that mysterious curtain, I'm both tired and detached, which leaves me kind of numb to a scene that left me crying in public when I read the book, tears rolling down my face in the break room at work.

Edit:  I see I reviewed this when it first came out too, and whaddaya know, I made a lot of the same complaints the first time too.
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4 comments:

  1. Charity10:46 AM, August 23, 2015

    I love the film. I do. For some reason, it just works for me.

    But I remember swearing while reading the book, I got so enraged at Umbridge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hamlette (Rachel)5:10 PM, August 23, 2015

      Yeah, I think a lot of people count this as their favorite. Just doesn't work for me.

      Cowboy was just telling me about an article he read that posited that the reason all HP fans hate Umbridge with the fire of a thousand suns, but are less visceral in their reactions to Voldemort and other villains, is that most of us never run into a Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini... but almost everyone has encountered someone who abuses power and enjoys making other people be subservient.

      Delete
  2. Chloe the MovieCritic1:32 PM, March 23, 2019

    This is one of my favorites of the Harry Potter books (because we first see my favorite character of the whole series, Luna Lovegood!), but I really don't like the movie, they just mess everything up!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hamlette (Rachel)1:43 PM, March 23, 2019

      MC, aww, how fun that Luna is your favorite character! She's highly awesome.

      But yeah, the movie is... never going to be my favorite.

      Delete

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