Garbled and unfocused

Rating: 4/10 (19 July 2007)

To this non-reader of the book, the plot line in this film hardly made any sense at all. There is a great fuss about 'a prophecy' Voldemort needs to get his hands on, but what it is or why he needs it remains unclear almost until the end. And once found, it basically appears to dispense the tacky morale that Voldemort is the true weakling because he'll never know love or friendship. That eventually either he or Potter must die is again not an insight that seems to require any great prophetic gifts. Before these stunning pieces of wisdom are revealed, towards the finale of the movie, the viewer has sat through a prolonged but lame attempt to psycho-dramatize HP. Though Potter ended up as the hero in each of the previous movies, we here find him all of a sudden an inexplicable outcast, old friends suddenly picking fights with him. Are his buddies that fickle? Themes of loneliness and first love crop up, but are handled in a hackneyed and rather embarrassing way. There's much ado about The Kiss, yet at the first setback HP apparently drops his girlfriend like a brick, and without a question asked or a word of explanation offered. The adolescent shouting matches might have been just bearable hadn't the acting been so wooden.
Worse, the attempts at realism compromise the mood of magic and surprise that was maintained in one way or another throughout the previous installments. Moments of quasi art-house spareness and puerile introspection do not sit well with the undeniably dazzling visualizations of the magical world - even though some of the latter (the great hall with its magical ceiling; the moving paintings; the brooms etc.) do pale somewhat on their fifth outing. On the other hand the design of the Ministrry of Magic is spectacular to say the least.
Many characters merely seem to put in an appearance to remind us that they are still around. New characters do not generally improve matters. Helena Bonham Carter was better as the Corpse Bride; here, she merely overacts. Imelda Staunton, though, is a joy to watch and makes the most of the twisted Umbridge.
It all ends with a big wizard fight that looks like "Lord of the Rings meets The Matrix", and no doubt will satisfy viewers hungry for spectacle. None of it, though, struck me as particularly original, nor very exciting to be honest.
Inconsistencies abound, of course. I wondered how it was that nobody could see the thestrals except those "who have seen death", yet later on Ron and Hermione who couldn't see them before are suddenly flying on their backs. The idea of Umbridge letting herself be lured, all alone, into the woods by the youngsters whom she knows to be her sworn enemies is way of track. And if it is as easy to kill with a spell as we see here, why didn't Malfoy sr., or Voldemort, or Potter for that matter, die ages ago? As I see more of the movies, I not only wonder where it's all going, but I rather get the impression that Mrs. Rowling was wondering the same while writing it all. In the final reckoning, I'd rate OOtP below GoF, and way below PoA, which remains in my view by far the strongest installment to date.