some of the worst editing in recent years

Rating: 7/10 (13 July 2007)

I wanted to like this film. The thing that really made this film disappointing was the editing. The entire pace of the film is rushed, such that almost every scene ends abruptly or cuts out way to soon. I don't blame Yates for condensing a book that is over 800 pages long, but the film is TOO CONDENSED. This is proved in the total runtime of the movie, which is only a little over 2 hours, the shortest HP film yet. Ironic that the OotP is the LONGEST book in the series but the SHORTEST film in the franchise. Therefore, everyone other than Harry and Umbridge (who both give excellent performances) gets very little film time or very few lines. Major characters such as Ron, Dumbledore, Snape, Cho Chang, and Voldemort seem unimportant because they do so little. If you are a fan of the book, be warned, because the film leaves out A LOT of things and makes some changes. For example, in the Department of Mysteries, there are no revolving doors. The fight scene only takes place in 2 rooms. Although the last 20 minutes are really exciting, it would have been even better if they included the revolving doors. Also, the movie uses the newspaper flash technique as a means to give information that could otherwise be ACTED out in a scene, but i guess that would be to hard to do. It is obvious this technique is used to the directors advantage to shorten the films runtime, but it is used so much that it gets really annoying.