Trashing J K Rowling --- Warner's $242 million Rip-Off!

Rating: 1/10 (1 August 2007)

Any Harry Potter movie is a special event, so we chose Washington DC's finest movie theater, the UPTOWN, with its giant Cinerama curved screen and superior stereo, laid down our $8 per ticket, and expected the best.
My guess is that when J K Rowling saw this movie, she might have said, "Oh! God! No! What have they done to my book?" The screen version is a mess from A to Z, beginning with having no definable story, wooden acting, and throwing Rowling's message of GOOD vs EVIL in the trash.
Lord Vandermort is still alive, you see, and Harry knows this, but before he can convince others to take action a new teacher takes charge of Hogwart's, throwing traditional school values away such as confronting evil. She reminds us of today's liberal teachers who hammer their agenda at the kids and deal with dissent via detention and other Nazi-like decrees. Such a character cries out for a face-off and rejection by the students, but the plot is so poor that.........
Harry, Hermione and Ron lead some of the brave students to the Order of the Phoenix --- which is no more than a secret room at Hogwart's, lined with bookcases full of old books; but devoid of any defined Code of Honor or any such thing to tell what Phoenix was all about.
The acting is wooden and dreadful, beginning with Dumbledor but is pervasive through the entire cast. I have a long standing crush on Hermione as played by Emma Watson; but Miss Watson is given almost no opportunity to portray Hermione's strong character; instead reduced to A Team-like walks alongside Harry and Ron. Her dialog is way shorter than my review. Rupert Grint --- I don't recall Ron as having a word of dialog. Harry kisses an Asian girl with Hermione and Ron watching. We get no indication whether Hermione cares, or whether she and Ron are now a pair.
By using way-too-familiar tricks such as swooping zoom lens swipes and a "wall of noise" style musical score, the film tries to convey that a story, some sort of conflict, is going on; but nothing is happening.
Another thing is the magic --- which is undefined in terms of purpose or limits. Whenever the filmmakers lose confidence in their plot-starved storytelling they rely on suddenly smashing glass and other noisy nonsense --- in no way like other Potter films where you knew the how and why.
Finally, I don't believe for one second that 11,500 moviegoers input a score of 10 for Order of Phoenix. Too often recently it's obvious of studio meddling to spoil honest input to the IMDb website. Studios have been buying good reviews in newspapers for decades; it just makes sense they'd corrupt input to this site. Order of the Phoenix is a dreadful trashing of J K Rowling and no real Harry Potter fan would score this mess a 10. As a Security person, I have no idea how to prevent studio feed into these ratings -- still allowing you and me access; but shame on them.