Poor Harry Potter. Poor J.K. Rowling.

Rating: 2/10 (5 November 2007)

Don't get me wrong: I absolutely loved J.K. Rowlings books about the little orphan boy trying to accept his past and his future in a ruff world coated with magic. It is probably exactly that; the care and detail in which Rowling describes her characters, their emotional world and experiences, which have made even the grown ups standing in line for each new Potter release. Naturally it is not easy to reflect the incredibly detailed books in an approx. 2 hours length film. Despite this the first and second movie managed to capture the enchantment the concerning books mediated and the viewers were plunged into the dreams and hopes of Harry Potter and his friends and their adventures in a wizard society located in a muggles world. The third movie reflected the growing pains of HP and the other main characters, which are really the main issue in Rowlings books, very well and managed to spellbind the audience once again. The little children had given way to the young adults they where bound to grow into facing the world as it is, magic or no magic. Still, the movie, and the book, contained a great portion of humor and made it real treat for the public.
But then something happened. With the fourth movie the spell was slowly loosing grip of the audience. Harry Potter was turning into a big time production with a hissing number of special effects smothering the actual story. Suddenly it became all about 'Adventure' and 'Action' and the movie showed uncomfortable similarities like any other big 'young audience' production such as the slaughtered new version of Narnia.
The fifth and latest movie added 'Epic' to its vocabulary. With it, the final bits of magic are diminished to expensive special effects and fast scene cuts. The initial depth of the characters, and thus the story, has now completely vanished, leaving an empty superficial and completely uninteresting shell called 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'. Be ware, might you not have read the actual book, the huge gaps in the movie's story line, because of the o so bad editing, will leave you completely confused and disorientated after less than ten minutes and initiate a frustration for the rest of this 'Action slash Adventure' flick, filled with special effects and combined with 'Epic' scenes and camera slides failing to capture the public.
Both J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter deserve better than this evil treatment of Mr. Yates.