Monday, July 23, 2007

HP & Order Of The Phoenix: Thumbs Down

Yep, another cranky review but man, there was no sense of excitement in this movie, no sense of adventure. Just a lot of hand wringing and fear, which didn't translate as exciting fear, rather I was annoyed that I was being put through the experience. And I was very bored throughout much of the middle. The big problem was there was no central emotional storyline that ran through the film. There was something vague about Harry being bummed about not having friends and family even though of course he does have friends and then there was a thing about his becoming evil as manifested by his anger, which is tritely played as a metaphor for puberty and also way too closely mirrors Spiderman 3. It's been done to death. I didn't know this until just now but this was the first of the HP films not to be written by Steve Kloves. I think that's a big part of the problem. The script's over-reliance on Harry's nightmares as a storytelling device is especially lazy.

On the plus side, Dolores Umbridge is just a brilliant character and was brilliantly played by Imelda Staunton. I especially loved that she, as the micro-villain of the story, was a not so thinly veiled stand-in for conservatism run amok in the presence of fear (and their use of fear to control hearts and minds.)

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