Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film).

If you haven’t read the book, I can’t imagine how confusing the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie would be. Even ignoring the standard “they left my favorite bit out” complaints – I have one too – the movie left out so much of the why from the book that I would imagine a number of viewers reached the final sequence in the Ministry of Magic wondering, “Who are they, and why are they there?”

In that regard, HP5 was reminiscent of the the first film, which had a similar pacing and lack of tension problem. In trying to pack the movie with lots of interesting details from the books, the screenplays for the two films felt frantic, with short scenes and jarring transitions that rob the films of the tension that’s critical to understanding the importance of the final scenes. Without the book as a guide, an HP5 viewer won’t know what the Order of the Phoenix is or why it exists, or what the importance is of that glass bulb (it’s mentioned just once prior to the Ministry scenes), while building plot points like Voldemort’s intrusions into Harry’s mind are given short shrift. At the same time, some subplots were omitted or cut down to the point of irrelevance from the book. The students’ rebellion against Umbridge was dropped to a single scene, which meant that my favorite line from the entire series – “It unscrews the other way” – was dropped. The Harry-Cho storyline is absurdly compressed and would have been best omitted in its emasculated form.

While the screenplay gets the bulk of the blame for this mess, someone else, likely the studio, is to blame for the short running time of only 128 minutes prior to the credits. The two-disc DVD edition contains about 15 minutes of deleted scenes, most of which would have at least helped give some body to and slow the pacing of the main film had they been included. (There is also a hilariously weird scene of Emma Thompson, sadly wasted in a minimal role in the film proper, making a mess of her meal at the welcome feast. There’s also a cute behind-the-scenes look hosted by Natalie Tena (Tonks), who is rather fetching in her lavender wig.) There’s little question that the substantial audience of readers who go to see the films will tolerate a 150-minute movie if it’s good enough, and there’s no reason why the studio couldn’t flesh it out with a “director’s cut” that runs as long as three hours. What we may have here, however, is the manifestation of the old saw about the Chicago Cubs: If the revenues are going to be huge no matter how mediocre the product, why spend more on the product and cut into profits?

The film had some high points. The special effects continue to improve; the Floo network transitions are quick and realistic, and the scenes in the Ministry foyer were very impressive. Tena was also thoroughly underutilized as Nymphadora Tonks, both because she’s adorable but also because the character gives Harry another person in his orbit who clearly cares for him. The young ladies continue to get cuter, although Evanna Lynch is too cute to be playing Luna Lovegood and the space-cadet voice was a bit cloying. And the sequence in the Ministry of Magic worked reasonably well because it’s supposed to be frenetic, although again, it could have been longer. It’s a shame that the writers, the director, and the studio are wasting such rich, vivid material; I wonder if twenty or thirty years hence, someone else will decide to “update” the series with a more serious attempt to bring the books to life.