This is
an odd one for me. There are big parts
of this movie that I really love, but others are major disappointments. The book was hit-or-miss for me, too, though
for mostly different reasons. While the
film nicely truncates what didn’t work for me in the book – much of the
interminable teen romance drama has been cut – it runs into other issues that, despite
liking the movie a lot, keeps it from being one of my favorites.
Although
Voldemort’s return at the end of The
Goblet of Fire is a huge factor here, much of Harry’s time isn’t spent
fighting You-Know-Who. Instead, his largest
foe in this movie is the Ministry of Magic, the wizard government currently
beset with fear-mongering and propaganda as the Ministry sticks its head in the
sand re: Voldemort. The Minister of Magic and his emissary to
Hogwarts, the saccharine and malevolent Dolores Umbridge, try to discredit
Harry’s claims and prevent their real
fear: that Dumbledore wants to usurp the
Minister and is training his students to fight in his name. With Umbridge making sure everyone toes the Ministry
line and keeping them from learning any practical defensive magic, the trio steps
up to help their friends prepare themselves for Voldemort’s coming war,
appointing Harry as their secret teacher.
As in
the book, I adore Umbridge, her
efforts to turn Hogwarts into a police state, and Harry and co.’s rebellion
through the underground defense classes.
To me, Umbridge is one of the most interesting characters in the series,
and the movie captures her brilliantly. From
her deceptively soft, pink-swathed-fluff-ball appearance and cloyingly sweet
voice to her shocking undertones of menace, the execution is tremendous. Imelda Staunton hits every note just right in
the role – amazing work all around. The
DA classes are also well done, finding a balance between the thrill of
rule-breaking, the triumph of learning something important, and the seriousness
of the stakes involved (the scene between Neville and Harry about Neville’s
parents is wonderful.)
My
biggest complaint, then, is that there’s not enough of either plot. The
Order of the Phoenix is the longest book in the series, and even after
trimming a lot of romance, there’s oodles of story leftover. Bizarrely, though, this is the
second-shortest movie in the franchise; only The Deathly Hallows: Part 2
is shorter, and that’s on half of a
book. As such, plenty of good stuff
doesn’t get its due. Much of it is touched on, but the movie employs multiple
drive-by montages to pack huge plot progression into fragments of
screentime. Umbridge’s first in-roads at
Hogwarts get this treatment, as does a large chunk of the DA story. Other developments are recapped through
quicker news-headline sequences, and the popular Snape’s Worst Memory scene is
similarly piecemeal. Besides not doing
these threads justice, it also makes the movie feel a out of place, because
it’s the only film in the series that uses montages so extensively (it’s worth
noting that it’s also the only film with a screenplay by Michael Goldenberg
instead of Steve Kloves; Kloves has his own issues, but he does tend to approach cuts with a scalpel instead of a
hatchet.) While it’s all undeniably
well-made – I can see why the franchise kept David Yates as director for the rest
of the series – I’d have killed for another 10-15 minutes of runtime. With such a long book, it’d have been justifiable,
and it would’ve allowed these plots to build more organically.
Warnings
Magical
violence (including torture,) scary stuff, and some disturbing elements.
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