Potter Pots Gold

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2007)

Let me start this review off by saying that I am a Harry Potter fanatic, at sixteen years old I'm at the perfect age to truly appreciate the series. I started to reading the books when they first came out and I was instantly hooked, I think I was about six or seven when the original book came out, and now ten years on and now five of the seven movies have been made and the final (and in my eyes best) book has just been released. So in short I have grown up with this series, and in some respects the characters have grown up with me. However, in my opinion I always found Order of the Phoenix to be the weakest book of the series. Sure its still brilliant and has its moments, but after the high of Goblet of Fire I just felt Order was lacking something truly magic. It seemed overlong, a bit boring and just filling in the gaps until the final two books. I was expecting Order of the Phoenix to be the weakest movie as a result of this, however due to a great bit of cutting out the unnecessary bits of the book, Order of the Phoenix ends up being in my eyes the very best Potter movie to date! Now I also understand this will be a bit controversial with many people watching the movie, as I was sitting watching this I realised that if you are not a fan of the books or have not read the books I wasn't certain those people would truly appreciate the film. In some respects Order of the Phoenix is the most fan friendly of the series and doesn't rely on an overdose of CGI like the other movies. This one actually has a hell of a lot of talking going on, in fact up until the huge fight in the Ministry of Magic, there isn't a whole lot of action at all. What Phoenix does instead is develop interesting characters, show the plot to its full potential and deliver some great moments in the series.
So lets start off with the acting, now throughout the Potter series we have seen the lead three, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint develop before our eyes. In Philosopher's Stone the three were annoying. Emma Watson just about got away with it, Rupert Grint made me laugh a couple of times so I never really found him to be awful. But Daniel Radcliffe was eye gougingly awful. Since Philosopher's Stone, in each and every movie we've seen the leads get better and better, until now we see them improve yet again and actually become very good. Daniel Radcliffe impressed me most this time around, for once I saw the Harry Potter I wanted to see. You really got a sense of his inner struggle and his confused emotions. His character finally got the room to develop and we saw what Harry Potter should be like. Ron and Hermione are a bit sidelined and so I can't really comment too much on them. The adults this time get to shine as well. Imelda Staunton is the epiphany of evil as Dolores Umbridge, she's exactly as I visualised her in the book, and to be blunt she's a complete and utter cow. But she's a great cow and I can't wait to see her return in the future films. Gary Oldman finally got the opportunity to shine as Sirius Black, he was sadly wasted in Goblet of Fire, but here he gets some great moments with Harry. Alan Rickman gets some great scenes, but for fans of the books they are all waiting for that one moment in Half Blood Prince with Snape. The rest of the actors all do perfectly, special note must go to Evanna Lynch who is pitch perfect as Luna Lovegood.
As I have previously mentioned Order of the Phoenix lacks the huge set pieces that Goblet of Fire gave to us in the forms of the Triwizard trials. This time its pretty much about the school itself and how Umbridge is slowly taking over, its also a bit about rebellion in the form of Dumbledore's Army. The big set piece takes place at the end in the Ministry of Magic, and boy is it brilliant. For those who wanted to see wizards fight, they shall not be disappointed. The big final fight between Dumbledore and Voldemort will have fans sitting on the edge of their seats, that moment is huge. There are also moments of brilliance to be found in the Occlumency lessons which were very well done, the Weasley twins invasion of the OWL's, a tense Dementor attack and any moment where Umbridge wanders round being as nasty as hell.
Order of the Phoenix comes out as one of the best movies of the summer so far and also the best Potter movie to date. Its fast paced, got a great climax, a nice bit of drama to keep things going and also some very funny moments. I can't wait to see director David Yates interpretation of Half Blood Prince which is a much better book than Phoenix. If he keeps to how he did it here we should get a very dramatic and intense movie. Of course fans of Potter won't like this, but people who aren't fans of Potter generally just pretend to hate it more than they actually do so. For people who are fans of the books or movies they will lap this up intently and be sitting and waiting for the next two movies to arrive.