The Best Book! The Worst Movie!

Rating: 4/10 (12 July 2007)

I strongly believe this movie is a case of watch the film then read the book to get your epic experience of JK Rowling's Harry Potter adventure. I like many thought if done properly this movie would almost be like what The Empire Strikes Back did for Star Wars, boy were we wrong! From the Start, The Film is rushed into play with a scramble of scenes to set the (to fast) pace for this adventure, along the way shortly into the film undersized scenarios and many disjointed plots creep onto screen, whilst some capture the book for a split second, others become irrelevant to the point of why were they even shown? The change in screenplay writer and the Editing along with the direction of this film is very much lacking and it begins to feel more like a made for T.V movie than a box office Blockbuster. PLEASE Bring back Steve Kloves! Many people in my theater who were egger to see HP5 Order of The Phoenix became lost with plot and were trying to understand what was going on, as the entire cast looked like Extras except for Harry?
The Pace of the film is deliberately rushed forth to try and capture the story and even with some high tech special effects it failed miserably. Some of the Special Effects and scale is amazing, however the fight scenes are rather rushed not to involving at all and a little confusing in the end, even the Dementors look rushed from post production and some places like the Train Station at the end and parts of Hogwarts look cheap and nasty and don't flow at all with any of the previous movies. Some of the storyline gags ILM are famous for were not really present and the director had so many missed opportunities form the story including Doxys, Sirius Black's Mother and even Dobby The Elf (1st scene HP2 Chamber of secrets). ILM ands the FX crews need credit, but they did fail to deliver the Magic under direction in this movie, a real tragedy.
I disagree with a lot of people that say this film could have never have been done to justice; it is a massive cope out. True the film is 40 mins too short on screen, but a REAL special edition DVD would go a long way to restoring the mismatched storyline to this film. We can only pray that HP7 Deathly Hollows runs this long because it's going to need it. Some simple gesture and film technique would have blended this story a lot better than the scramble of scenes which filled the screen. The most upsetting part of the film is the climatic Wizard Battle, which lacked scope, really never got started and was by far the worst ending on screen for any of the HP Books. I can not stress enough that JK Rowling's Order of The Phoenix Novel is by far the best Book to date in this franchise and that the film does not do any justice to detail. Warner Bros have a hit and missed badly with the fights scenes and HP6 the Half Blood Prince DOES NOT have the same depth this story has. Yes we all know sacrifices are made to storytelling with flaws on the big screen, but in my opinion HP4 The Goblet of Fire was put on screen way better than this.
Inclosing, the movie is a bit of a disaster but you're going to absolutely love this book that will not disappoint you at all! So go and read it after the movie -not before it!