Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Of all the Harry Potter books, the Order of the Phoenix was the most bloated, clocking in at 870 pages in the hardback edition, large enough to be used as bricks if you were to want to build a wall out of books. That’s not to say that the book was by any means bad . . . but it did leave me wondering just how anyone would manage to distill it down into the typical length of a feature film.
According to my calculations, if the film were going to include everything in the book, it would need to cover 6.3 pages every minute — and given that some pages are far more important than others, it was pretty inevitable that lots of stuff would be left out or truncated. Some of this was scarcely noticeable, some of it was surely not noticeable to anyone but diehard fans and those who have just read the book, but other plot lines suffered from the lack of attention. Harry studying Occlumency, for instance, is reduced to two quick scenes, and the romantic subplot between Harry and Cho Chang is barely there. We only see Hagrid once, and Snape, while more present than Hagrid, is pretty rare himself, getting only a few scenes. Many of the other familiar faces are reduced to cameos.
The areas where the film focuses its attention are reasonably fleshed out, however. Much of the film revolves around Dolores Umbridge and her crusade to take over Hogwarts in the name of the Ministry of Magic. Imelda Staunton does a wonderful job portraying Umbridge, simultaneously a perfectly proper lady and something truly horrible. Voldemort’s plans are also featured prominently. The trio of Harry, Hermione, and Ron get lots of screentime, which is clearly a good thing — this being their fifth movie together, the actors have a strong rapport and are more than capable of helping to hold the movie together.
I had a hard time picking a score for this one. I did enjoy the film, but there was definitely a sense of all the storylines being a little rushed, and I suspect that many who see the film will be able to pick out some favorite scenes from the book that didn’t appear. Still, it was a fun movie, and it held together moderately well. There’s only so much you can do to make an 870-page novel into a movie, and in that regards, the filmmakers did an admirable job.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson. Directed by David Yates. In theaters as of July 11th, 2007.
July 18th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Hier gibt es Harry Potter auf Deutsch, ohne Englisch! Ich möchte der Film sehen, aber ich weiß zu wenig Deutsch. Es tut mir weh!