Absolutely terrible

Rating: 2/10 (19 July 2007)

I am a huge Harry Potter fan and had a lot of expectations coming into the theater tonight. Wow. When I left I felt angry and disappointed. I disagree with everything the director chose to do with this movie. Besides from the content omitted from the book that I think was crucial to having the story come alive with the detail that makes J.K. Rowling's series so fantastic, the whole feel of the movie was unlike any of the others. The hand held camera scenes were as distracting as the unnecessary flashes of excessive light. The swooping in scenes with newspaper headlines was pointless and hard to watch. I did't want to feel like I was on a roller coaster while trying to read a magazine (my sentiments towards the whole movie really), I wanted the director to put me in a magical world on the verge of a war. Instead, I was forced to watch Hogwarts lose some of its zeal in favor of the director's personal whims and license with the superb text of The Order of the Pheonix. Overall, I found this lackluster and a supreme failure given the story that it was trying to display. I hope the next movie deals with the book and story more than ease of writing in special effects and 'cool stunts' that are not in the book. A terrible chapter in an absolutely phenomenal series of both books and movies.