Incomplete Story

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2007)

I loved the acting and directing in this film, and I thought that the effects were quite good, but the story was lacking, and the tone was too persistently dark.
As far as the story, it just felt like a jumble of events without a solid story line. I have grown accustomed to the Harry Potter films having much of the story cut out, it is to be expected if you want a movie to come in at under 4 hours, but this was extreme. The title of the movie is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but the Order does not play more than a VERY minor, passing role that may as well have been completely omitted from the movie all together. There are several things that make this movie hard to follow as a story in itself, rather than just a bridge between movies.
As far as the mood of the movie, I understand that this was the darkest book to date, but the movie cut out all of the joy and levity present in the book. The entire book was not just a dark brood-fest, and that made the book palatable. The drudgery just got old after a while.
It is often said that the movies are supposed to be taken on their own merits, ignoring the quality of the books or the previous movies. Doing that with this movie only makes the movie worse, because out of the context of the books and other movies this film was complete gibberish. As a part of a series the movie was entertaining, but it really needed to add about 45 more minutes of story in order to stand on its own.