Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Review

Ten days before anxious Harry Potter-philes worldwide learn the ultimate fate of the boy wizard in J.K. Rowling's seventh and final book in her mega-selling series, the big screen adaptation of her fifth novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, lands in theaters with a bit of a dull thud. Stodgy rather than sweeping, with precious little of the wondrous excitement conjured by Alfonso Cuaron in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), David Yates' only intermittently compelling film version of Rowling's doorstop of a novel (896 pages) proceeds in fits and starts towards its thankfully rousing finale. There are many pleasures to be had watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—not the least of which is the film's sterling supporting cast of British acting royalty—but the filmmakers dole them out too sparingly, as if they were under the spell of the film's officious Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), a petty tyrant in pink.

In fairness to Yates (The Girl in the Café), the unenviable task of condensing Rowling's densely-plotted epic into a 138-minute film that satisfies Potter-philes would test any filmmaker, let alone a British television director who's never made a feature film on this massive a scale. He and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg (Peter Pan) therefore deserve credit (and perhaps our sympathies) for tackling this unwieldy narrative, which finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) gloomily awaiting the start of his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. During a miserably hot summer's day, two Dementors suddenly attack Harry and his repulsive Muggle cousin, Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling). Breaking the rule against practicing magic outside Hogwarts, Harry banishes the Dementors with the Patronus Charm—and immediately receives an owl-delivered letter, expelling him from Hogwarts.

Fortunately, several members of the ancient Order of the Phoenix, led by Harry's godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), whisk him away to the Order's London headquarters, where Harry learns that he'll get the chance to plead his case in a Ministry of Magic hearing. Sirius and the others also inform Harry that his arch-nemesis, Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is assembling an army. Yet for some inexplicable reason, Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) refuses to believe that Voldemort has returned. And while the Ministry of Magic overturns Harry's expulsion, thanks to the timely intercession of Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), Potter receives a chilly welcome from his fellow Hogwarts students, many of whom blame him for the death of popular student, Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), slain by Voldemort at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).

As if that's not bad enough, Hogwarts' new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge, has taken over the school, driving away beloved faculty and instituting strict rules, enforced by her army of "Inquisitors." Although Harry and his longtime school chums Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) defy Umbridge by forming "Dumbledore's Army," a group of students determined to fight Voldemort, Harry is troubled by recurrent nightmares involving the Dark Lord and the Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries, the setting for the film's climactic showdown.

There's arguably enough material for two movies, or a miniseries, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the longest novel in the series, so it was perhaps inevitable that the resulting film suffers from narrative fatigue, as well as a glut of exposition guaranteed to confuse Potter newcomers. It's also more character-driven than prior films, with Harry's teen identity crisis vis-à-vis his psychic link with Voldemort taking dull precedence over bona-fide action. Except for the spectacular denouement, which nearly atones for the talky patches that threaten to bring the film to a halt, there is an acute lack of thrills in Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix. Certainly there's nothing as imaginatively conceived and excitingly staged as the Triwizard Tournament's series of challenges that Harry Potter faced in the last film. It may be that Yates' directorial sensibility has been too shaped by his television work (he's helmed several BBC miniseries) to give Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the cinematic sweep it needs to captivate us fully.

But if Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix rarely soars, it doesn't sputter out completely. It teems with clever wit, visual ingenuity, and moments of genuine warmth. And the cast! Although Radcliffe, Watson and Grint acquit themselves nicely, they must fight to gain a toehold onscreen opposite the staggering line-up of British acting talent who compromise the film's supporting cast. Staunton (Vera Drake) makes a pertly sinister villain, while Fiennes oozes serpentine menace as Voldemort. Gambon, Oldman, and Alan Rickman register strongly, as does Helena Bonham Carter, in her brief but deliciously evil turn as Death Eater Belletrix Lestrange, sprung from Azkaban. They provide the real magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.