All in order

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2010)

I recently enjoyed "The Order of the Phoenix" while watching through all the Harry Potter films without having read the originating books. In a sense, it seems that it might be called "Harry Potter does political thriller," and, as it turns out, Harry Potter does a pretty good political thriller. It means that the intriguing and vast fictional world that these take place in is sufficiently developed that its characters and situations can theoretically be dropped into all kinds of different story and the associated references can be assumed to be understood.
From the outset, and in keeping with plot developments concerning he return of the evil wizard Voldemort, this film is grim an bleak to a degree that its predecessors were not. This dire atmosphere, while not lending itself to the exuberance of the previous films, is evocative in a story involving so much back-room intrigue as the agent of danger and which explores its principles by dwelling so on past pains, especially in Harry Potter's case.
There is a good amount of mainly non-specific political allegory here, in the form on 1984-style manipulation of Harry's school by the reality-denying forces of the Ministry of Magic, and this is all very cleverly done, with rather darkly-humorous developments coming in the form of countless draconian announcements posted on the school's walls. This satirical political theme pairs well with the strain of discourse around Harry's doubt for his own goodness and the message that nobody is ever fully bad -- love and kindness being what redeems him from being like Voldemort. This shows a moral development of the very viewpoint of the series as a whole. Luna Lovegood is a charmingly eccentric new character, blithely unmindful of how she is denigrated by her fellows. Dolores Umbridge treads close to the line of over-the-top caricature but something in the performance brings the unsettlingness of her sweetness-and-light delivery of totalitarianism well.
This film is technically and in all aspects of production as good as its predecessors and the writing too is more subtle and as good if not better. However, in this new grimness it seems that there has been some loss of the sense of fun and wonder that permeated the earlier Harry Potters, making this no less a good movie but a somewhat less joyful one.