Naughty children deserve to be punishedHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Rating: 6/10 (21 July 2007)

For starters, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was by far my least favorite book in the series. Not much happens until the end, which is actually pretty good, there is a lot of repetition through the beginning of the story, and Harry's adolescent anger and temper just get plain annoying. After enjoying how the fourth book was adapted onto film, I was hoping we'd get more of the same here with a distilled version where main plot is paramount and the detentions and acting out cut down immensely. At first I thought I was going to be very happy. The film starts off great with Dudley and Harry in the London playground where the Dementors attack. Just having a sequence in a Potter film outdoors and not at Hogwarts was a welcome sight and everything pretty much went as planned. There were some exclusions when the boys arrived back home, most noticeably the absence of Mundungus, but I was willing to look past them. Even in the early time at Hogwarts, Potter has one outburst of anger and it seems that would be it. I was ready to ease into the tale and enjoy the ride, but that comfortability never occurred.
I will say that the acting was par for the course. We have a few new characters and as a result see less of those we have come to love. McGonagall is almost nonexistentwhich means her attack is not used hereand she was the one person who stood up against new teacher Dolores Umbridge; Draco is a blink and you'll miss him role; and the Order itself are hardly seen until the climatic ending and that's a lot of decent paychecks for little work. Even Hermione and Ron have their roles shrunk in order to keep a big spotlight on newcomer Imelda Staunton's Umbridge. She is the main antagonist of the story so I understood the large focus on her, and Staunton is wonderful in the role. My problem was that she was made into an evil witch. In the book, although misguided in her thought process, she was not a vicious psychopath as she is shown to be here. Umbridge always did what she thought was right and allowed by the Ministry of Magic, however, her cinematic counterpart turns about halfway in, once her power is increased at the school. She becomes a monster doing anything she wants, at one point physically abusing a child, and even about to use the Cruciatus Curse on a minor, (I don't quite remember that one happening in the book, although I could be wrong). Maybe the reason I disliked the book was because she wasn't evil enough and Potter couldn't necessarily justify his anger, and in that regard, maybe the filmmakers needed to up the ante. However, by seeing this new incarnation, I have to say her wrong decisions in the novel were more believable because at least she thought she had her mind in the right place and wasn't just being a vindictive crazy woman.
Besides this tonal change with Umbridge, I was disappointed in all the differences from the novel. **If you haven't read the story there are spoilers in this paragraph** This film was by far the least like the book, and that should have been a good thing, but unfortunately for me it was not. Besides things happening out of order, Trelawney's run in with the High Inquisitor occurring way too early, (and where was Firenze?), and Hagrid being gone way too long, many things were just changed all together. Cho Chang is used as a scapegoat when it was her friend in the book that blew in "Dumbledore's Army." This fact makes the relationship with Harry awkward and needing some extra work in film six to iron things out. Hermione never enchanted the sign-up list, nor used the magic coins as a meeting signal (something used again in book six). We never find out who is giving the Weasley twins money for their jokeshop, we don't get to see Neville's parents or Lockhart at the mental hospital, Harry doesn't end up being the only one cutting lines into his skin which subverts the extra abuse he receives above the others, and there is no Quidditch so Ron never became a goalkeeper. Also, Sirius does not get the chance to give Harry his magic mirror, which has to play into book seven or why would it even have been mentioned, and in fact dies from a curse not just falling through the curtained archway. The most egregious error, though, is the treatment of the centaurs. We never learn that they are ready for war and no longer care if it is children they hurt in the forest. This fact causes their capture of Umbridge to not have the meaning as it does in the novel, thus setting up their role for the following story. As far as that goes too, we never hear of Hagrid's work with the giants and whether they will join Dumbledore against the Dark Lord. **Spoilers finished**
If I need to blame anyone, it will have to be first time Potter scribe Michael Goldenberg. It seems as though he didn't read the sixth book and decided to adapt this one without care for what he was leaving out that may be important later, not to mention how he treats some of the characters he keeps in. What was my least favorite book has now become my least favorite cinematic entry as well. Even when Chris Columbus gave us two mediocre paint-by- numbers films at the start, they at least stayed true to the books. With this newest one, the tone has shifted, most of the good parts were missing, and now the next film will probably need extra explaining to fix the mistakes made here in continuity.