Somewhat Disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2007)

As an avid reader of the books, I have always considered the Order of the Phoenix and The Half Blood Price as my two favourite Harry Potter books. It worries me therefore that David Yates is/will be directing the Half Blood Prince when in my opinion, in the Order of the Phoenix he has failed to capture the full experience which J K Rowling created in her novel.
I know it is an incredibly difficult task to condense a novel of the sheer length of Order of the Phoenix onto film, however again in my opinion, Mike Newell did a far better job in interpreting The Goblet of Fire novel (which isn't a short story by anyone's standards) and captured most of the truly significant elements from the book onto the screen.
I wonder how much of this is down to the screen writing skills of Steve Kloves who was responsible for all the screenplays for the previous films. Screenwriters are often the unsung heroes of successful films and in this case through Steve Kloves, we have seen a progression of improvements in the transfer of book to screen through each film as the screen writer becomes familiar with the characters and the storyline. David Yates brings in Michael Goldenberg and suddenly we have a fabulous novel turned into a mediocre movie.
We started off with a simple but satisfying film in the form of HP and the Sorcerers Stone and in each successive film we saw a build up of the stories and the characters which I think we had all hoped would lead to a crescendo for the final movie. However, I just feel let down by Yate's interpretation of the Order of the Phoenix and I really hope that Steve Klove's return as screenwriter for the Half Blood Prince signals a return to that development of character, storyline and content. Forget about CGI effects (well maybe not forget them) but at least lets get all the elements of character back onto the screen for the two final films.
Plaudits do have to go to Gary Oldman and Alan Rickman who simply ooze quality for their portrayal of Sirius Black and Severus Snape. Daniel Radcliffe too has progressed from the 'amdram' new boy we saw in the Sorcerer's Stone, to a polished character who displayed all the anger and confusion which epitomised J K's portrayal of him in the Order of the Phoenix.
(Oh, and by the way, I would have had no problem with a 3 hour movie with an intermission. Maybe we'll see a 'Directors cut' version of the Order of the Phoenix in the future)