Very nice addition to the series.

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2007)

I had incredibly low expectations for this movie, and I actually didn't know I was going to see it opening night until my friends told me they had tickets like six hours before the show. Needless to say, I was quite impressed.
The film covers most of the events that occurred in the 5th Harry Potter book subtitled "The Order of the Phoenix." It did an EXCELLENT job at portraying almost all of the necessary elements to the story, while twisting some events away from the actual story line. Personally, I enjoyed that. I don't like to see movies that are 100% what they're based on- there's no element of surprise, and a lot of the fun of watching a movie is taken away. I won't say what parts were/were not excluded for the sake of not spoiling anything for those that haven't read the book (shame!) or what was changed so that you can be pleasantly surprised like I was. The plot did tend to stick to what was absolutely necessary to keep the story progressing, though. The lack of "filler" disappointed me. We didn't get to see any of Harry's classes besides Defense against the Dark Arts, or classes where Professor Umbridge was ridiculing other teachers and threatening their job security. Draco Malfoy also appeared for... all of three minutes.
I was never really too fond of the children cast of Harry Potter's movie series. They aged too quickly for the movie series, and often acted really... poorly. Example: Harry's character stutters after saying "He's trying to...", and before he can pause long enough to indicate that he's dropped the sentence or thought, Hermione jumps in and says "to what Harry?" Little details like that prevent me from taking them serious as actors. I guess I've never had a qualm with Rupert Grint (Ron) and don't mind Harry as much as I do Hermione.
That said, there were a lot of really corny and cheesy moments- Moments where the entire cast laughs at something completely not funny or assaults the audience with preachy and ridiculous lines that are just... stupid and show signs of poor writing. Surely the director could have hired a writer more skilled to portray these characters for such a high profile film! The film also introduced 2 new characters- Professor Umbridge and Luna Lovegood. Both were portrayed AMAZINGLY. Umbridge was a perfect representation of what the character would be, and really made the plot interesting. The same goes for Luna, whose "dreamy" voice quality was perfectly recreated.
I really enjoyed myself. For some reason, I suffer some sort of "amnesia" in between releases of new Harry Potter books and movies and forget how much I love them. This movie has once again reinvigorated my interest in the series, and it just might be one of my favorites.