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| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 138 |
| Public Rating: 7.33 (18 votes) |
Director: David Yates |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy |
Year: 2007 |
| Writer(s): Michael Goldenberg (screenplay), J.K. Rowling (novel) |
| Distributor: Warner Brothers |
| Reviewed by: Friday and Saturday Night Critic |
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Additional review(s) by:
Mel Valentin [7/10] (view).
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“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” – from now on “Harry Potter 5” or “the Imelda Staunton one” to differentiate it from “the David Thewlis one” or “the Brendan Gleeson one” – is a mess. It is disjointed and episodic. It is without momentum or throughline. It is overburdened with exposition and characters useless save for the promise of “they might be important later.” Players go on and on about stuff happening to other people currently, or stuff that happened to other people in the past, or stuff that happened in the last book, or stuff that’s gonna happen in the next one. Subplots that should have been excised completely have been cut down to nubs and serve only to make the film feel incomplete. (Do we need the giant?) Why are they still here? Because “they might be important later.”
“Harry Potter 5” is, in short, a charming piece of production design and acting, but a structural nightmare. It, and the whole series, is a case study in what happens when moviemakers are trapped by source material and not allowed to get down to the business of making movies. “Harry Potter 5” either needs to be four hours long, or 30 minutes.
(I’m a little hung up on structure right now because I’ve been beating the shit out of my documentary, my fiction feature, and several screenplays to get them to be the leanest, meanest, most direct pieces they can. And then Warner Bros. comes out with what is essentially a 2+ hour set of appendices and theatrically-released deleted scenes. )
“Harry Potter 5” is comparable to “Attack of the Clones” in that it’s mostly about setting stuff up for later movies. But “Attack of the Clones,” for its failings, is jam-packed with stuff it has to get done, and at least George Lucas knows about the montage, whereas there are only about 30 useful minutes in “the Imelda Staunton one.” To wit, a recurring character dies near the end. That should have been the end of Act One of the next movie, which’ll probably be “Harry Potter and the Scary Room at the End of the Dark Hallway” or, I dunno, “the Malcolm McDowell one” (“viddy well, Little ‘arry!”).
But imagine the uproar if Warner Bros. had announced “we’re just gonna compress Book 5 into the first half-hour of Book 6, because nothing really happens in it.” It could show Harry cornering one of those people he always catches whispering in mid-story. They could have an 80-second conversation that covers what would typically be two movies worth of glacially-parceled nuggets of information. But because there was a fifth book, there must be a fifth movie, even if there’s no need for it. Outside those 30 minutes, the rest is moping and regurgitation, and Imelda Staunton’s fascist witch taking over the wizard school so it can be put exactly the way it was before at the end. The moviemakers aren’t being allowed to make their own thing, just describe someone else’s.
As for “it becomes important later” – I question that. Try to think back to “Harry Potter 2.” I know, it’s tough. It was “the Kenneth Branagh one,” charming if forgettable. Has Branagh shown up again? Fun as he is, I bet he could be cut. I bet Imelda Staunton could be cut, too – everything goes back to the way it was after she’s gone. I bet the whole second movie could be cut.
Why not drop “Harry Potter 4,” as well, just save the brilliant middle-section at the dance. Dropping “2” and the bulk of “4” would also get rid of a lot of redundant bits with Harry’s aunt, uncle, and cousin, whose relationship to him changes positively zero. In short, if there were enough hours in the day, I’d love to sit down with some Cliff Notes of the books. I’d trace all the arcs, themes, and threads, pick out the crucial ones, toss aside the least-charming of the dead-ends, and beat the series down into 3-4 movies with everything we need and nothing we don’t. I have a similar fantasy of getting Adobe Premiere Pro 2, a superfast processor, a microphone for changing place names, and a giant harddrive, and turning the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy into two movies.
Anyway, in summary, a bully from the Ministry of Magic (oft-mentioned Staunton) shows up at the Hogwarts wizard school and makes life rough. Periodically Harry, Girl, and Sidekick learn that Recurring Villain is looking for a maguffin (destroyed at the end without being used), and then the school goes back to normal. Harry is threatened with expulsion AGAIN and suffers the same bullies AGAIN and is alternately loved and hated by the studentry AGAIN. Staunton declares she hates children. We knew that from “Vera Drake.”
Lovely setpieces include a magical library of congress, a broomstick flight across the Thames, and apartment buildings shifting to reveal other buildings between them. (Space has always been flexible in the Potter universe.) Alan Rickman has a high-speed flashback that injects the film with the narrative compression / invention / abstraction that might be what the series needs. Rickman has also, by-the-by, reached the zenith of what began in “Die Hard,” in which he finds the very prospect of speaking utterly beneath him and beyond contempt. He gets in a great “obviously,” worthy of mention next to Jason Schwartzman’s “obviously” from “Marie Antoinette.”
The acting is good all around, which is to be expected from the regal Anglo-Irish supporting cast, but what’s pleasing is how comfortably the young actors have grown into their roles. Like “Star Trek 5” and “Lethal Weapon 4” to their respective devotees, I suspect “Potter” fans will be lenient with “the Imelda Staunton one” because it’s another chance to watch their friends hang out.
Although they took a bit of getting used to, I’ve liked all the other “Harry Potter” films, especially “Harry Potter 3” (it is the only “Potter” film to appear on the ballot for the AFI’s new Top 100). I guess I’m just crotchety because a “Harry Potter” is usually a good popcorn trip to the movies, with lots of pretty sights, likeable characters, and problems that don’t require guns, punches, and too many swords to resolve. The movies until this one have done well balancing the source material with the needs of the cinema – they’ve been relatively self-contained up until now, as these things go, and even if “Harry Potter 2” and “Harry Potter 4” are just rehashes of their direct predecessors, they’re still fun. Hopefully “6” will get back to work.
Finished July 12, 2007
Copyright (c) 2007 Friday & Saturday Night
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