MOVIE REVIEWS
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Synopsis: After returning to Hogwarts to begin his fifth year of school, Harry Potter discovers that much of the non-muggle world, including the Ministry of Magic, is in denial about Lord Voldemort's return. The Order of the Phoenix, a secret society sworn against Voldemort, is raising an army of wizards and witches to combat Voldemort's army. Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, suspects that Dumbledore is using claims of The Dark Lord's return as a means to overthrow Fudge as Minister. In response, Fudge appoints a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to keep an eye on Hogwarts. This new teacher, Professor Umbridge, enforces strict new rules on the student body, forcing a group of students to take matters into their own hands in order to prepare for Voldemort's impending attack. Under the tutelage of Harry Potter himself, this new group is called Dumbledore's Army.
Robert's Review - Movie Review - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
This movie was absolutely terrible and should have been called "Crappy Movie and the Order of the Refund." I enjoyed the charm of the other Harry Potter movies, but "Order of the Phoenix" was completely disappointing on every level. The magical flare and the charm that was so prevalent in the other movies is totally gone, and for some reason the CGI and special effects for most of the spells and creatures are so horrible that they looked Made-For-TV (like something you'd expect to see on a Sci-Fi Channel original movie). Apparently only Dumbledore and Voldemort have the powers to produce any decent special effects (which are extremely brief towards the end of the movie). Everything up until that point was really abysmally poor.
However, special effects (in my opinion) do not make or break a movie. If the other stuff (i.e. plot, script, characters, etc) is good, then I can forgive bad graphics. Too bad the plot and script were equally awful in this movie. Many of the characters and scenes were used as filler and the plot never really went anywhere. For the first 45 minutes or so I just kept wondering when the movie was finally going to START because the story that was being shown to me onscreen was a completely jumbled mess with no coherence or relevance to the overall plot. Sadly, that 45 minutes turned into 138 minutes, which brought this train-wreck of a movie to a close. Almost nothing was explained in the movie, so the audience gets to take a back-seat to everything that's going on. Many of the characters were either completely annoying or totally ancillary to the story. Oh, and if you actually happened to read the book, be prepared to be even more disappointed. The folks that I saw this movie with were big fans of the book and they were even more upset by how terrible this movie was than me (and I mean REALLY upset). They said this movie barely covered a quarter of what was in the book and that many of the major plot points were totally missing from the movie.
All in all, I'd give this movie 1 Lame Wizard Battle (out of 5). Re-watch value: NONE (I still want my refund!)
So I'm eagerly awaiting this movie and when I show up to theatre and it starts I wonder did the director even read the book? I really like the Harry Potter novels and so far I have enjoyed the movies, even when they started getting darker in number 3 and 4, however I have to say that this latest installment of the HP series really pissed me off. I understand that the book is 800+ pages however for the fans they should have done more than just cover what equates to about 20% of an abridged version of the book. If you wanted to watch a movie based on an overview of the book then this is it. The folks say they didn't want an overly long movie, so what? They cut most of the meat out and leave a hardened shell with no explanation or they fill it with fluff about crap that has no importance in the series at all.
I was greatly disappointed in this movie and I know I will probably be blasted for saying this but I thought this was the worst HP movie yet. I was not very impressed and it had nothing to do with the actors, the special effects it was all about the story, there are key elements that were not there and I'm wondering how they are going to make the next HP movie because they didn't set it up in this movie. The one hope I have is that when the DVD comes out with the uncut version some of those scenes will be there. I'm sorry I am stoning this movie, but I consider myself a fan that wanted to see a good movie and that just wasn't the case here.
Overall Rating: 2 Stars (If you have read the book) or 3 Stars (if you haven't read the book). Re-Watch Value: Low (I will purchase the extended version on DVD and re-watch it to see if the longer version is better).
Trivia: (1) Evanna Lynch beat over 15,000 girls for the role of Luna Lovegood. (2) The radish earrings worn by Luna Lovegood were actually made by Evanna Lynch (the actress portraying her).
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