While everyone else on the planet was busy getting sucked into Potter’s world of wizardry I missed the boat. I read the first book and have seen all the movies but never really understood what all the fuss was about. The books are phenomenally popular—they’ve made J. K. Rowling the first billionaire author—and the movies have made a fortune—they are among the highest grossing film series of all time—but it wasn’t until the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the sixth entry in the series, that I began to understand the allure.
I don’t usually review the audience I see a film with, or even how they react to the film—the only criteria I use is how I feel about the movie’s quality—but in this case I have to remark on the connection Harry’s fans have with these characters. I saw the movie in a screening room with about twelve other people. Directly in front of me were three twenty-something women who cooed during the romantic scenes, gasped during the adventure sequences and laughed when the silly stuff happened. Normally their amount of distracting interaction with the movie would have ticked me off, but in this case it actually enhanced my appreciation of the film. People have tried to explain the appeal of Potter to me but it wasn’t until I became aware of this trio that I finally began to understand what a deep connection people have to these characters.
Filmmakers often try to make audiences care about the characters in their films, but Rowling, the actors and the franchise’s succession of directors have actually made it happen. Having spent hundreds of hours reading the books, seeing the characters grow up, fall in-and-out of love and inch closer to ending Lord Voldemort’s reign of terror, readers and viewers feel real empathy for Harry, Ron and Hermione.
That’s all well and good, but is The Half Blood Prince a good movie?
Yes, mostly. This is a pacer installment, a place holder which sets up the next chapters and like the others it has high production values, imaginative special effects that will make your eyeballs dance; a talented cast all of whom prance about on beautifully designed sets in spectacular costumes but, “Merlin’s beard!”, as with every film since the first one (the only book I have read) I was occasionally left in the dark as to some of the story’s finer points.
Harry Potterland is a singular place with its own particular customs, history and culture and for those familiar with its trappings the movies are magical things that bring that world to life. For the rest of us all this talk of potions, half blood princes and horcruxes might be a bit head scratching, unless of course, you’re sitting just behind the trio that made the screening of The Half Blood Prince so enjoyable for me.
Official plot summary from Warner Bros.:
“Emboldened by the return of Lord Voldemort, the Death Eaters are wreaking havoc in both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that new dangers may lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching. He needs Harry to help him uncover a vital key to unlocking Voldemort’s defenses critical information known only to Hogwarts’ former Potions Professor, Horace Slughorn. With that in mind, Dumbledore manipulates his old colleague into returning to his previous post with promises of more money, a bigger office and the chance to teach the famous Harry Potter.
“Meanwhile, the students are under attack from a very different adversary as teenage hormones rage across the ramparts. Harry’s long friendship with Ginny Weasley is growing into something deeper, but standing in the way is Ginny’s boyfriend, Dean Thomas, not to mention her big brother Ron. But Ron’s got romantic entanglements of his own to worry about, with Lavender Brown lavishing her affections on him, leaving Hermione simmering with jealousy yet determined not to show her feelings. And then a box of love potion-laced chocolates ends up in the wrong hands and changes everything. As romance blossoms, one student remains aloof with far more important matters on his mind. He is determined to make his mark, albeit a dark one. Love is in the air, but tragedy lies ahead and Hogwarts may never be the same again.”
I have to start by saying I’m not a Harry Potter fan—I’ve only read one of the books, I’ve seen the movies, but have always been left cold by the boy wizard with the scar on his forehead. As a result I wouldn’t know an Obliviator from a Hippogriff, but that doesn’t stop me from objectively looking at the movies.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a handsome film, with high production values and imaginative special effects that will make your eyeballs dance. The large cast includes fine actors like Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson (don’t blink or you’ll miss her), Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes and the majestic Michael Gambon all of whom prance about on beautifully designed sets in spectacular costumes.
It’s all top notch, the trouble is, I don’t really care.
I have found that throughout the franchise that the films have become more and more inside. As the plots thicken and the page count of the books rises to the 700 and 800 range the various filmmakers at the helm of the movies have struggled to present the material in a way that will keep Potterheads happy. How to get the essence of the books on screen, while still maintaining some kind of cinematic storytelling has always been a problem for the Potter directors, particularly as the books get denser and darker. Alfonso Cuarón pulled it off in the third installment, The Prisoner of Azkaban, but others haven’t always won the battle of presenting Potter lore in a way that would make sense to an outsider.
There’s a lot of info that goes into the stories, unusual people, places and names and of course Harry Potter fans love all that detail because they understand the references and feel a real connection with the characters. I would suggest though, that the new film probably won’t have much appeal for anyone who hasn’t read the books or made a study of the story.
Director David Yates seems to assume that the audience will know what’s going on, and makes no attempt to get the non-Potterheads caught up with the lingo or situation. In that way the movies have simply become big budget companion pieces to the books, designed to sell more wizard hats and magic wands.
Now before you try and cast an Antonin Dolohov’s Curse on me let me continue by saying that I know Potterites will enjoy this movie. It’s a bit talky for the first hour, but it does submerge the viewer in a dark and dangerous world where dementors lurk around every corner and people in authority don’t always have your best interests at heart.
When Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) returns for his fifth year of wizardry studies at Hogwarts he soon discovers that he must bear the brunt of a smear campaign launched against him and the venerable head master Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). His classmates and the wizarding community in general have bought into the stories circulated to the newspapers by the Minister of Magic (Robert Hardy) that Potter is lying about the return of the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and are treating him like a pariah. The good Minister, you see, is concerned that Dumbledore is after his job and must discredit both the head master and his protégé to protect his post.
To keep an eye on Dumbledore and Potter the Minister brings in a new Defense against the Dark Arts instructor to Hogwarts. Professor Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) is a rule-spouting tyrant who mistreats the students and teaches a theory-based course that will leave her pupils woefully under prepared should they ever have to defend themselves in the presence of evil.
Harry, at the prompting of his best friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), creates a rouge Defense against the Dark Arts class, hidden deep in the bowels of the school. He secretly trains a small group of students who adopt the name Dumbledore’s Army, who will help fight the astonishing battle that lay ahead.
The Order of the Phoenix may be the most subversive of all the Potter films, harboring as it does, a healthy disrespect for misplaced authority. It’s also the least playful. It’s a dark story in which Harry is in danger, both physically and mentally. Younger viewers may find some of the physical manifestations of danger a bit too intense—the Dementors are scary ghost like creatures who literally suck the life out of their victims—but they probably won’t get the mental anguish angle.
Teens will likely relate to Harry’s adolescent pangs of bitterness, anger and self pity, which are quite realistically portrayed. Harry’s growing up before our eyes, a fact made obvious through flashbacks to the first movie in which he looks like a mere babe in the woods and his issues are the same as teens all over the world. The only difference is most teens can’t hide under the cloak of invisibility when the going gets rough.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will please most Potter fans and confound non-Potterfiles who may wonder what the heck is going on.
The Harry Potter phenomenon is so powerful that you could have called this Harry Potter Drinks a Goblet of Water and presented an Andy Warhol-style film of young Harry chugging a glass of water for two hours and Potterheads would still wear their wizard hats and line up to see it. There may be fewer kids in line this time, however, as Goblet is the darkest installment in the $2.6 billion (and counting) Potter franchise.
The story is boiled down from the 700-plus page novel by J.K. Rowling and as the poster tagline reads, “Difficult times lie ahead, Harry.” Difficult times indeed. Not only must the three heroes fend off evil supernatural forces in the form of Lord Voldemort but they also must grapple with dangers of a much more mortal sort—jealousy, romance, mortality and Harry’s raging hormones. Voldemort may be Harry’s sworn enemy, but the real trouble starts when puberty comes to Hogwarts. The Goblet of Fire sees the trio growing up and the filmmakers eliminating many of the child-like elements of the earlier three films. Gone are Harry’s goofy family and the house elves and with them went the lighter feel of the other movies. The Goblet of Fire is firmly rooted in supernatural adult fiction and as such earned a PG-13 rating.
A rooftop race with a dragon, Mad Eye Moody’s leering mechanical eye and the snake-like Lord Voldemort are sure to excite Potterphiles, but if I have a complaint it is that there is almost too much going on. Donny Brasco director Mike Newell has done an fine job of cramming a very long book into a two-and-a-half hour film, but it seemed to me that there were too many characters—Alan Rickman’s deliciously menacing Severus Snape gets lost in the crowd, barely managing two lines, while the inclusion of tabloid reporter Rita Skeeter adds nothing to the film but running time—and the quieter scenes, wedged in between spectacular action sequences, seemed rushed.
Full disclosure: I am not a Potter Head.
