Too Fast And Devoid Of A Reason To Exist

Rating: 3/10 (22 May 2008)

The fifth Harry Potter film doesn't feel much like a film at all, everything happens too fast, as it whizzes through an entire year of events, lines babbled under too-loud music, making it feel as if nothing is really happening and with no noticeable time actually passing until Dumbledore informs Harry that he has been ignoring him for a year. A year? Surely not. Nothing happened.
Most of the plot is about Dolores Umbridge taking over Hogwarts, which has nothing to do with Lord Voldemort wanting to kill Harry, which is what seems to be happening at the start. Umbridge, a pink-clad giggling bureaucrat from the Ministry of Magic, seizes control of Hogwarts, a character that starts as a clumsy juxtaposition gag  she smiles but really she is mean  but develops into a chilling child-torturer.
While events surrounding Harry at the start of the film are mildly mysterious and quite creepy, these are instantly dispelled by the horribly disappointing realisation that Harry is going to spend most the film with his two useless sidekicks, Hermione and Ron, who are simply there to stop any of that creepy, interesting stuff going on too long. Emma Watson as Hermione wobbles her head and pronounces syllables that aren't there, failing to be convincing at any point, Daniel Radcliffe as Harry veers wildly from completely believable to child-in-a-school-play acting, and Rupert Grint mumbles his lines, possibly deliberately because Ron is dull and pointless, but if so, Ron really needs to be cut. There is no friendship or love discernible between the characters and every moment Hermione and Ron are on screen is annoying.
On the subject of unbelievable relationships, it is rather tedious that Harry is obsessed with his Godfather Sirius while poor Lupin is forced to the side, even though he clearly cares deeply for the boy. Harry is also still hero-worshipping his father when here we get a glimpse that he was a horrible bully, before moving hurriedly on.
As the plot speeds along, forgetting to be a plot, explained only in the lazy device of spinning newspapers, it crashes into the finale, in which we learn at some point the good guys will fight Lord Voldemort, but it won't be in this film, begging the question, why does this film need to exist? Much like the previous two, it is simply adding in five minutes exposition that might be needed later. There is a bit of a scuffle at the end between the Order of the Phoenix (good guys with white smoke) and the Death-Eaters (bad guys with black smoke) but it is difficult to see who they actually are, and the battle is dull and confusing. Voldemort shows up, looking stupid and rather ill with a flat nose and skinny white arms, in time for a lame ending.
This film is a non-entity, simply setting stuff up for further sequels. At least some day, these will end.