Dan came home early yesterday.  What a pleasant surprise!  We went to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" at our local movie theater.  I haven't read any reviews but it was a pretty light crowd for a summer afternoon.

The film was enjoyable for its special effects and, especially, for Imelda Staunton's delightfully cruel performance of Dolores Umbridge.  I'm not a professional movie reviewer like my brother-in-law, Ken Morefield (check out his website here), but I do know when I like a movie, when I LOVE a movie and when I hate a movie.

I'm in the "like" category with HP&TOOTP.  One of the issues with making films from complex books is the necessity of paring down the subplots.  JK Rowling, author of the Potter series, loves her subplots.  So we get only the breathiest, flimsiest version of Luna Lovegood here.  Ginny Weasely, Harry's future love interest, is reduced to looks and the occasional production of extremely impressive spells.  Hagrid comes in and out of the movie without much motivation.

I love the characters and very much enjoy the actors who portray them in the movie.  This time around, however, I felt like their performances were abbreviated sketches rather than fully realized characters.  And I don't really feel it was the acting that lacked luster (Radcliff, Watson and Grint are fine performers...especially Radcliff and Grint).  Instead, I have the general impression (rather than a fully fleshed opinion) that the writer was at fault.

The writer, Michael Goldenberg, has delivered some good screenplays in the past (Peter Pan-2003 and Contact-1997), but this time seemed to be content with stringing together major plot points rather than creating fully realized characters as he did in his adaptation of Peter Pan.

Most disappointing of all was the short shrift paid to Harry Uncle, Sirius Black.  One of the most devastating losses of the book was Sirius falling "through the veil."  In the movie, it's a loss but not the blow of the novel.  And Harry's struggle against killing one of the dark lord's minions is less impactful since we can't understand the depth of his loss, horror and rage...and what it costs him to hold it back.

Ah well...that's my two cents worth.  And it's more than colored by the fact that I am in process of listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  The performer on the audio version, Jim Dale, does such a superb job of narration that it has been difficult for many of the movies to compete with his characterizations.

I'm about half-way through the book and already regretting the end of the series.  Does that stop me from listening?  No.  Quite a treat for when I'm on the elliptical.

Hey, a girl's gotta have something to motivate her!

p.s.  Check out Kenneth Turan's review for a cogent statement of what I merely was "feeling."

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