Harry Grows Some Chest Hair.

Rating: 8/10 (21 May 2011)

It's blistering. Harry is overcast with lonesomeness, bullied by his abusive cousin Dudley, also in the testosterone throes of puberty. And this is when Dementors attack, those hellish soul-eaters, the terror keepers of the wizard prison. What they're doing here is unknown at present, but that's what makes it especially tense. Newbie director David Yates' refusal to go easy on his audience, regardless of age, is evident right away. There's magic here, but there's nothing saccharine or bright about it. This is magic as power, as an illustration of familiar human urges both dignified and horrendous, as something as real, bleak and patent as the tattered, graffiti-scribbled pedestrian tunnel, severely lit in gray-green, in which the Dementors assail.
This fifth installment in Harry's imaginative and budding chronicles perfectly amalgamates the nimble humor and frivolous charm of the first two films and the cockeyed growing pains of the brilliant third and troubled fourth. Unlike so many fantasy stories, each episode provides new perspective, as here when Harry familiarizes Weasley with the experience of riding the London Underground, upturning the awe you'd expect from a Harry Potter movie: The wizard folks in awe of such commonplace phenomenon as we Muggles undervalue. Indeed, this wholly achieved world seems newly fertile and vivid: The wizard newspaper all of a sudden gives the impression of Minority Report's dynamic newspapers. Maybe highly developed magic is more or less interchangeable with technology.
As opposed to The Goblet of Fire, the hormone-racing gravity being introduced in The Order of the Phoenix to the once very light-hearted saga is smartly balanced, not relying so heavily on whose dates are successful, whose crushes are requited, rock bands, dances, and instead looking to the rebellious impulses of our largely anti-authoritarian, autonomy-seeking teen years. Instead of a focus on mawkish romantic tropes, there is a sense of hormonal aggression. In the climactic sequence, the use of magic wands practically resembles a stand-off with guns a la the video games and action films teenage boys grow attached to at the age of the characters.
In addition, a Roald Dahl-style new touch pops into the magical assembly of eccentrics, Imelda Staunton's scene-stealing Delores Umbridge, a fully engrossing character whose only flaw is her way too on-the-nose name. She seizes more than a small amount of interest as the conniving schoolmarm in blush-shade attire and weird feline fixation, as voodoo is paradoxically reimagined as genuinely shocking pink. She's a new teacher who brings a tyrannical say-so to the esteemed classrooms and hallways of Hogwarts, as she coaxes her way to despotism. It's a pitch-perfect concept for this particular stage in the saga of Rowling's maturing character, and neither Staunton, Yates or screenwriter Michael Goldenberg make any missteps in bringing her to the screen.
Rather than placating and patronizing the sensibilities of teens in a Twilight-oriented manner, Order of the Phoenix speaks to the defensive rising of the teenage attitude. Hogwarts is under relentless bombardment by the venal, undemocratic Ministry of Magic. Miss Umbridge is persecuting him and wreaking fault on him. He and Dumbledore are objects of a propaganda crusade. Harry's "love" interest is found to be less than loyal. He's wracked by shame and perception of pending peril. Harry is one estranged wizard.
On the face of it, it may appear Yates, already an old hand at British television, is simply meant to continue the franchise in a practiced but not unique way. No, Yates brings a new visualization to the series and gives it pulsating vivacity that was sadly lacking in Goblet of Fire. He is a clever, elegant stylist. He is cinematically practiced, and character is a main concern for him. He uses black in a way very keenly attuned to the coming of age not only of the characters but their fans. In most fashionable modern movies, CGI grows unnecessary and mercenary almost as soon as it appears. However, Yates uses special effects as an internal part of the magicians' real world. The effects never engulf or overpower character. They're exceptional, largely because they unite with characterization and Mark Day's supremely artistic editing. Like Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban, it does not reinvent the wheel. It just keeps it ever spinning.