Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix rolling around in its grave

Rating: 1/10 (26 July 2007)

It was by far the most disappointing movie-related experience of my life. I wouldn't even go as far as saying that this film was movie based. It was, perhaps, inspired by a book, who knows.
The storyline is rushed and empty. They cut off everything relevant to the plot, and leave everything that's due to impress those who have not read the books in.
They INVENT passages, just to fit in some of the extremely over the top special effects they want to impress us with. That's just underestimating the public.
Not only did they cut many great stuff out, they changed almost every scene. It was like they were trying to show things you get the feeling of after reading the whole book in about thirty seconds, so they had to do it super-obvious for it to show. Most scenes felt ridiculous, over the top and childish.
And, the plot being so rushed, you can't get inside the story, not even remotely in the same way as with the books. I felt like a million miles away, and left the cinema utterly disappointed.
Sure, they made tons of money, but at the cost of murdering a great book, a book in which the Harry Potter series goes from being great, interesting, kids novels about a boy with magical powers, to be an excellent series for all ages, that sure, dwells on the topic of magic, but that is also about human relationships, the characters' personalities, and teenagers' feelings. The book with more character development in the series, and you barely get to hear their names. Absolutely NO character development, but oh sure, they find time for all those irrelevant passages with a shot at winning them a prize for special effects.
Dumbledore's character, again, immensely disappointing, but that we are used to by now. You don't even get the glimpse of the absolutely calm, cold-headed and love-is-the-most-important-magic-of-all Dumbledore. Michael Gambon should read the books ASAP if he wants to continue portraying this magnificent character.
The only plus of this movie is the casting, which I thought was excellent. Luna was absolutely amazing, everything I had imagined and expected. Bellatrix was also pretty good, and Daniel was surprising. There are a couple of scenes that left me awe-struck.
Overall, I would say that calling this movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is false advertising.