Movie review!

The movie is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thoroughly enjoyed it. :-) Warning: there are probably spoilers, so if you don't like that sort of thing, watch out.

They did a really good job condensing the book. They kept all the really essential plot points--well, the essential ones as far as we know, seeing as the last book isn't out yet. The dementor attack on Harry and Dudley was properly grim. They had the house on Grimmauld Square, and it sure looked dark and nasty. Kreacher and the portrait of Sirius' mother made it in, though not at length. Harry's Occlumency lessons were mercifully abbreviated, but one did clearly get the idea they were a fiasco.

Umbridge minced around in her nasty hairy pink suits, going "hem, hem," and calling centaurs "filthy half-breeds." (Brilliant.) They had fun with the filmography for the bits where you had to find out what the Ministry of Magic was up to: you'd fly through layers of Wizarding newspapers, catching bits of headlines and moving pictures, and finally fall into scenes where Fudge was blustering to the press.

Several reviewers mentioned the Weasley's spectacular exit from Hogwarts: they're right. It rocked. It involved a dragon-firework kind of like the one from Bilbo's birthday party. It even knocked all Umbridge's Educational Decrees off the wall so they went smash on the stone floor. You've got to love it.

Most of the actors are so very good, I wished they got more screen time. Dumbledore is an exception; none of the movie Dumbledores have remotely gotten across why anyone should respect him, and this Dumbledore (partly by necessity) is even more distant than usual, even in the final explain-it-all scene. But Emma Thompson has the most charming and incompetent Trelawney--of course she's a right old fraud, but that doesn't mean Umbridge should kick her out. Kingsley Shacklebolt is cool as all-get-out; he, I think, wound up with a bigger part than in the book, because he had to fill in for various members of the Order of the Phoenix that got elided. Neville also wound up with a lot of house-elf lines, but it worked. Tonks is adorable. It took me aback to see her punk outfits, because when visualizing her I'd forgotten that detail, but it was perfect. "Don't call me Nymphadora." I really would have liked more Tonks in the movie. Luna Lovegood, actually, was almost as freaky as any of the Death Eaters, because she was so very calm and spacey. I've always rather liked Luna. She has the strength of character to be completely weird in a school environment, which is admirable.

Ralph Fiennes remains a disturbing Voldemort. But Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange took the cake. She was freakishly insane. One reviewer said she was "in full Banshee mode," and that's about right. She definitely didn't get enough screen time, and when she did, it was so dark you could barely see her. She wore black and blended in with the ill-lit Department of Mysteries, you see. I'm definitely looking forward to having her in the next movie.

One interesting thing: in abridging this movie, they actually removed some of Harry's angst. I found this fascinating compared to Lord of the Rings and Narnia, where they felt the need to give characters completely unwarranted I-can't-be-king-angst. I suspect it's because Harry, unlike Peter and Aragorn, already had enough angst to satisfy any scriptwriter's soul and to spare. So the movie Harry is considerably less irritating than the book Harry, who spends hundreds of pages whining and snapping at his friends.

The final scene is also less violent than in the book. I think it's because they wanted to shorten it so much, but none of the kids got knocked out or had bones broken or anything. They all got headlocked by Death Eaters and menaced with wands, and I think Luna got smashed in the teeth, and that's about it. Though Harry did get possessed by Voldemort in the end, which I don't remember from the book. But as an addition it worked. In the book, Harry escaped possession not so much by choice as by who he was as the accumulation of years of choices: even when he slipped and tried an Unforgivable Curse, it didn't work because he didn't have the hate stored up for it. This Harry was actually writhing on the ground full of Voldemort's nastiness, but he chose love instead--Dumbledore, hanging out with the Weasleys, Lupin, Hagrid, sitting around with Ron and Hermione, his parents' sacrifice--and that got rid of the Dark Lord. It was a less subtle event, and therefore worked better onscreen, but got across roughly the same idea.

So I liked it. It's dark, definitely dark, but it's not a particularly scary "jump" movie. I didn't scream once. :-)