Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Studio: Warner Bros.
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint
Director: David Yates
WorkNameSort: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Our Rating: 3.50
Tossing the fifth part of this series into the hands of a director (David Yates) whose thin résumé consists primarily of television work seems patently stupid. But J.K. Rowling didn’t get obscenely wealthy by being careless with her creations. Yates manages to nail the combination of adolescent alienation and magical darkness that has made the Potter series so popular. More importantly, he doesn’t take too much liberty with the formula. In fact, he takes very little. The Order of the Phoenix unfolds in a way that’s instantly recognizable (and predictable) to those familiar with the series. While that template ensures the movie’s internal (and serial) logic, it also allows several welcome stylistic flourishes. The visual impact of images that are playful (the ear on a thread that the kids use to eavesdrop), stunning (the architecture of the Ministry of Magic) and dramatic (the showdown between Dumbledore and Voldemort) cannot be understated. Those sights combined with Yates’ breathless pacing make the near-140 minute runtime of the film fly by. Nonbelievers are unlikely to be converted to Potter-ism by this entry, as the differences between this film and the other four are more than overshadowed by the similarities; the principal actors are still inexcusably stiff and the universe still requires you to process statements like ‘the showdown between Dumbledore and Voldemort.â?� At the end of the day, this is a series of books written with kids in mind, resulting in a canvas that is richly rendered, but built on a predictable foundation. That any director could spin a film that’s engaging and beautiful out of it is a testament both to the filmmaker and to the source material.
This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2007.