Film - General Release
reviewed by By Mary Hoffman
There are two stand-out performances in the fifth Harry Potter film. One you might expect: it is Imelda Staunton's terrifyingly sadistic and fascistic Professor Dolores Umbridge. The book says she looks like a toad and Staunton hasn't bothered with that but this vision in pink tweed and pillbox hat, like Hyacinth Bucket, with a studyful of live action kitten wall-plaques, deliberately tortures students with the "special pen" that carves detention lines in blood on the backs of their hands. So much more scary than the obvious villainy of a Voldemort.
The other discovery is more remarkable; every time Evanna Lynch's Luna Lovegood is on screen, you realise that it is possible for people of the right age to act persuasively a teenage school student. Her face, her voice, her presence all convince utterly that this most interesting of Rowling's Hogwarts creations is a one-off - a student who is uniquely herself and unaffected by others' opinions.
Unfortunately though, Harry turns to Cho Chang, dead Cedric Diggory's girlfriend, for the much publicised first kiss. That is quite charmingly done, with a handy sprig of mistletoe materialising over their heads but immediately rubbished by Harry's account of it to Ron and Hermione's enquiries about how it had been for him: "Wet Æ she was crying." Shortly afterwards, Cho betrays Harry and the others to Umbridge and is then dropped from the film and Harry's life.
Order of the Phoenix was an unwieldy, flabby 870 pages long and widely considered the worst book of the sequence. The film is a manageable two hours and eighteen minutes, yet fans have howled their outrage across the forums of the Internet that so much has been cut, "The longest book is the shortest film," being a recurring theme.
It is visually striking and memorable, some highlights being: the only intermittently visible 12 Grimauld Place, which is the Order's headquarters, the terrifying Dementors and impressive sequences in the Wizards' Court and the Ministry of Magic. My favourites were the wonderful CGI of the myriad falling glass balls in the hall of prophecies and the terrific and much-needed light relief of Fred and George Weasleys' farewell firework display as they swoop through the examination hall, having decided that Hogwarts is no longer for them.
Classy and expensive, but this viewer often felt that a mega-sized cinematic hammer was being used to crack a fairly small plot nut. The best part of the film - and book - is the assembling of Dumbledore's Army, a student resistance movement organised by Harry and co. because they are not getting any proper Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons from Professor Umbridge.
The place where they practise in the Room of Requirement, a place that comes into existence only at times of great need - though Neville's being mildly jeered at by Crabbe and Goyle doesn't really seem to qualify for such a refuge. Anyway, this room, where Harry gets his kiss under the mistletoe, sees even those less than gifted students like Ron and Neville strengthening their magical skills.
But apart from this, the overarching plot of the books does not move forward much. The membership of the Order is strangely underplayed; when they turn up to fight Voldemort's adherents in the climax at the ministry of Magic, you'd be hard-pressed to say who they were. You're not likely to forget Bellatrix Lestrange, though, played completely over the top by Helena Bonham Carter, who appears to think she is in one of her husband Tim Burton's films, complete with lipstick applied in the dark and hairdressing courtesy of the Birds' Nest Salon.
OK, she has just escaped from Azkaban, where there might be a shortage of mirrors but the caricature just underlines how stereotyped the Rowling villains are; they even have names like Lestrange and Malfoy (and of course being known as Death Eaters is a bit of a give away too!).
Something weird has happened to the young actors in this film; they all, with the possible exception of Neville Longbottom, look YOUNGER than they did in Goblet of Fire; even the marmalade cat beauty of the Weasley twins seems to have regressed a bit. And Daniel Radcliffe, whose recent disrobing for his role in the stage play of Equus led to a positively pornographic rash of photos and interviews in the press drooling over his manly form, to me seems less mature and sometimes downright peculiar-looking, as if that one kiss has done something odd to his mouth.
And he still can't act! Nor can Rupert Grint and Emma Watson; it takes the arrival of a Neville or a Luna on the screen to underline that there is a difference between an actor who is still young and a young person cast in a role because they look right.
The book took a big risk in making the previously characterless but amiable Harry grumpy throughout and in leaving Hogwarts till quite late in the story, with hardly any Hagrid and only one significant scene between Harry and his mentor Albus Dumbledore. The film's many cuts do have the effect of reducing the more tedious harping on teenage angst to Harry's saying that he just feels angry all the time.
And with Dolores Umbridge at Hogwarts and Death Eaters invading the Ministry of Magic, not to mention having his godfather bumped off, this seems a reasonable response.