Better than expected, but only if you've read the book.

Rating: 7/10 (14 July 2007)

In this, the fifth instalment of the series, we find a very different Harry from before. Here, he is beset by insecurity and anger at the fact that he feels people and events are passing him by without his input. Is this normal teen angst or possibly is it Voldermort affecting his thoughts? Dumbledore has resurrected the Order of the Phoenix, a fighting force of wizards against Voldermort, but without much success.
No one believes Harry about He Who Cannot Be Named returning, and the Ministry of Magic is out to cast doubt on Dumbledore and Harry. To this end they place a teacher of their own in to Hogwarts. Delores Umbridge starts a series of events designed to promote the Ministry and discredit any other view. Harry starts fighting back with a secret series of training sessions in Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Throughout this time, Harry keeps getting visions which he thinks are due to his connection with Voldemort, and these lead to a spectacular ending involving a fight between the Order and Voldermorts Death Eaters inside the Ministry itself.
Now to the actual film. The beginning is so disjointed, with jumps from scene to scene without any follow-up that at times it becomes difficult to follow. Many story lines are shown as annoying spinning headlines from the Daily Prophet newspaper, and so much of the book is cut from the first half that several people sitting around us in the theatre complained that they had lost the plot within the first 45 minutes.
Fortunately, the last half of the film is more stable but there are so many changes, scene swaps, plot losses and more that as a stand alone film without having read the book, I'm afraid it just doesn't make the grade.
Far better than the Goblet of Fire and a good attempt to fit an 800+ page book into under 2 1/2 hours, but because there are so many things happening in the books that don't appear in the films, I'm concerned that book 7 might throw some spanners in the works as to the things that have been skipped.