Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (2007) 7/10
The Prisoner of Azkaban remains safely in its position as the best Potter film so far, since The Order of the Phoenix is good but not good enough. Imelda Staunton is the bright spark here as the tyrannical Dolores Umbridge and cheerfully overacts. However, the rest of the cast fares less well. Some of them deserve more screen time, like Rickman’s Severous Snape and Gambon’s Dumbledore. The most jarring point of the film has got to be the miserable about of screen time Gary Oldman’s Sirius Black get. Considering that the climax of the film is about Black, the lack of character development weakens the central plot. Others have too much screen time- the characters of Cho Chang and Trelawney deserve to be cut because they are boring and barely contribute to the plot.
Despite the missteps in time allocated to the supporting characters, our 3 main leads accquit themselves well, and Daniel Radcliffe get better with each passing movie. The final confrontation itself is disappointingly lacklustre, possibly the weakest ending of the series so far. Luckily, the plot of this fifth installment is strong enough to carry the movie, and the liberal use of CGI and the high production values makes this a solid albeit unremarkable entry to the Potter series. Not as good as Azkaban and Goblet, but still better than the first 2 films.
