Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the movie)

So I saw this last night (and just managed to squeak in reading the book for the third time before I went). I suppose I was bound to be disappointed; it is far and away my fave of the series (I'll let you know on Saturday night whether that is still true). This is the first installment by a director whose work I've not seen previously. He had an amazing visual sense; the Ministery of Magic looked fantastic, Harry's dreams/visions and the dementors were genuinely creepy, and the wizard fight at the end was phenomenonly good. In some ways the movie actually tops the book (what the director did at the end is so much cooler than statues coming to life to shield Harry, and having the Room of Requirement provide the mistletoe just when it was required was a stroke of genius). The screenwriter deserves some praise for masterfully condensing the longest book into what I'm pretty sure is the shortest movie.

Alas, in the end it didn't quite do it for me. The scenes without visual effects just really fell flat. They were staged funny, the actors didn't seem to know where to stand or which way to look (particularly Emma Watson, who never seemed to know what to do with her arms). It all felt so wooden; none of the emotional resonance carried over. None of the anger was angry enough. Harry should've been much more sarcasic in Umbridge's class, and the scene when Trelawney is fired really needed more, and should've been on the stairs. I have to blame the director here because I know these actors can act. Somewhere out there I imagine they're moaning "that's the take he kept? That one?" My favorite scene from the book didn't make it into the movie (when Neville's mother gives him the gum wrapper), but it's just as well. A bad rendition would have completely ruined it for me.

My boys didn't see it. From what I heard I thought it might be a bit much, and as they hadn't seen the Transformers yet they went to that one without me. They enjoyed it very much. Quin says that Oliver was on the edge of his seat, grinning, practically vibrating with excitement. I'll have to catch that one on DVD (probably about a million times...)