The Aerie

"Order of the Phoenix" - Preview!

A blog in our local newspaper provided information about an odd promotion - go to Myspace.com and add their promotional page to your "friends" list, and you could go today to see a free preview of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." My wife was quite skeptical, but I drove over the next morning to find the line for the film already forming at 8:30.

With some assurance the offer was for real, we added the required friend-entry to our MySpace accounts (oddly enough only my youngest didn't have one yet,) and headed over to get in line around 3:00 pm, which turned out to be plenty of time. We waited for four hours, taking it in shifts to go get food. The weather was absolutely perfect: if you had to spend four hours sitting and standing on a sidewalk next to a movie theater, this was the day to do it. By 7:15 we were comfortably seated in the second row of the theater and ready for the show to start.

What follows is m lengthy stream-of-consciousness review, without much editing since I want to get to sleep. But I thought folks might find it interesting. I'll try to gussy it up with some images and links later, right now I'm too tired!

And of course, Beyond Here Be Spoilers!

About the Promotion
To begin with, I thought the marketing of this preview was interesting - apparently it was word-of-mouth? Certainly that's how I learned about it. The result was that while the theater was filled, it was just barely filled. I suppose that's actually an optimum outcome - you don't want to disgruntle a lot of fans by turning them away - but if I were the organizer I would have been pretty nervous until around 6 p.m.

There was not a lot of on-site promotion or cheerleading by the promotional firm. Prior movie previews that I've attended have included T-shirt giveaways and pre-film cheerleading to get the energy up. This firm (Black Curtain?) may have correctly decided such things were
superfluous in this case.

There was a odd giveaway/takeaway - a plastic popcorn box with the Black Curtain logo and movie title on it. A bit underwhelming, I suppose one could use it as a pencil holder.

One preview was shown - for a Christmas movie called "Fred Claus"

Again the word "underwhelming" comes to mind. "Meet Santa's dysfunctional family" must have been the sales pitch. Is this what the world wants to see at Christmas? Little-people jokes and Vince Vaughn beaning Santa with a snowball? I'll pass.

Finally, a couple of weary young women were waiting after the movie to pen comments on sheets of paper. This seemed a little useless, as they ended up with "Totally awesome!" written about 20 times in lavender pen with big baloony exclamation points. It would have been interesting to have been asked to fill out a questionnaire, or better yet been provided with a website to go to for opinions.

About the Movie
The film gets off to a fast start, with an accelerated version of the Harry/Dudley/Dementor scene from the novel. This is the first of many daring and I think effective edits. While the movie overall retains the somewhat choppy feel of Goblet of Fire, with the sense that a lot of story is being jammed into the time available, OotP features a much more bold approach. Later we see entirely new dialog and storylines that diverge significantly from the novel, but I'd have to say that they are by and large quite effective and were well advised. We saw this in small ways in Goblet of Fire, where for example Neville was substituted for Dobby (as he is again in this film) and Barty Crouch Junior appeared in the initial dream sequence, but the changes in Order of the Phoenix are much more substantial.

While the initial scene mostly works, Kathryn Hunter as Arabella Figg does not, and the staging of Harry toting Dudley home looks awkward. Richard Griffiths as Vernon Dursley does not look at all healthy and I was really worried for the actor. I hope it's makeup, but Vernon Dursley looked like he was ready for the grave and it distracted from the scene.

The Order arrives to escort Harry to Grimmauld Place, and the emergence of the extra residence on the block does not do the book justice: if that's how they were going to do it, I'd've left it out. Natalia Tena as Nymphadora Tonks is very good: quirky and flirty and interesting despite very limited screen time. On the other hand George Harris as Shacklebolt didn't work for me.

The reunion between Harry, Ron and Hermione is well staged and has the tension I expected from the book, but Emma Watson's debut scenes in this film didn't raise my opinion of her acting. She does redeem herself a bit later on, but only a bit. Fred and George do rather well in the film, and the extendible ear scene was cute. Kreacher is too poorly rendered for me to fully respect the effort. He needed to be more crisply scruffy: at times his image looked blurry.

The trial scene did nothing for me and I wish it could have been left out. I would be very surprised to learn that Michael Gambon had actually read any of the books, his Dumbledore just doesn't work for me - and it gets worse later. In the scene where he prevents Umbridge from turning out Trelawney, Dumbledore SNAPS AT THE STUDENTS, "Shouldn't you be studying?" If Dumbledore ever snapped at a student, it wouldn't be due to embarrassment caused by a public row.

Imelda Staunton will receive well-deserved rave reviews for her Dolores Umbridge. While it does not match my own idea of the character from the book 100% (she's too attractive for one thing - Umbridge is described by Rowling as looking like a toad) Staunton frosts her Umbridge with a fine layer of sheer madness that has to be appreciated. Her perfectly-timed half-giggles made all the difference between cliche-evil and whoa-evil.

Likewise Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood, whom we meet in the Hogwarts carriage, completely steals every scene in which she opens her mouth.

And speaking of scene stealers, it's really a pity that Alan Rickman is so good as Snape, because he really casts the other actors into shadow. His time on screen is limited, but the energy he exudes in every scene is irresistible. When the camera returns to other characters it's like that moment after your mom shuts you in the fridge when the light goes out.

If there's a consistent flaw to the film it's that many excellent lines are lost to mumbling and bad sound. A prime example has been seen in the previews: Hermione says, "Breaking the rules is exciting," and Ron issues the tired "Who are you and what have you done with Hermione" response. I only knew what he was saying because it IS such a cliche! Less cliche examples of poor voice capture were totally lost. A character would mumble a line and I would be completely stumped.

A related problem is the score by Nicholas Hooper. There were at least two instances when the score shifted and I suddenly found myself thinking "Star Wars?" I don't know if these were scenes using John William's "Hedwig's Theme," or totally new stuff by Hooper (I'll have to seen the film again to be sure) but it was very jarring.

A consistently strong point to this film was the visual staging and editing. There are many examples where a less deft director would have resorted to expository dialog - Yates confidently replaces such nonsense with fast 1-second reaction shots. There are better examples, but for one that isn't a spoiler, watch for the establishment of Ginny Weasley's attraction to Harry.

As with Kreacher, Grawp and the centaurs suffer from bad CGI work. Grawp is toned WAY down from the novel, but is used to good effect despite being a bad effect: more bold rewriting. And there are a couple of scenes about which I have strongly mixed feelings, one of which occurs when the centaurs carry away Umbridge: I don't want to spoil it, but while it works it is also "too Hollywood" for my tastes. Likewise when Sirius Black encounters Lucius Malfoy in the Ministry: entertaining, but way too "Hollywood."

When Harry and Hermione return from disposing of Umbridge, listen for another of those mumbled lines when the rest of the DA explain their escape from the Inquisitorial Squad. Couldn't make out a bloody word.

The flight to London on the thestrals completely misses the opportunity of showing how weird the experience would look from anyone but Harry and Luna's point of view. And there was some comic potential in the entire DA stuffing themselves into the phone booth, but the scene was not provided to us. It wouldn't surprise me if the director didn't want to inhibit dramatic tension, but they would have been fun scenes.

The battle in the Ministry had both its ups and downs. I could have used more Bellatrix LeStrange - Helena Bonham Carter is excellent but you see practically every scene that she is in as part the previews. And maybe it was just me but I always pronounced the name "Le-STRAH-nge" not Le-STRAY-nge"...

The "misting" effect used for the battle scenes did not work for me - it just blurred what was happening and seemed to be a directoral trick to avoid staging complicated actions. And Sirius' death was spoiled for me by having Bellatrix cry out "Avada Kedavra!" I guess it makes sense for the director to say "Sirius is dead!" to his audience, but I was always struck by the novel's wistful suggestion that his cousin simply shoved him through the archway with some otherwise trivial spell. The idea that he was already dead before falling into the arch kind of wastes the whole idea of the arch itself.

The battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort in the Ministry, while too claustrophobic to be absolutely fantastic, certainly demonstrated that the battle between Saruman and Gandalf in 'Lord of the Rings' was dreadfully under-done. I kept thinking "this would have looked better than two old men sliding around the floor."

I include this particular (and not very good) image of Voldemort in the Ministry battle because of one thing: the damaged statue of the House-Elf behind Voldemort. This is the only indication I've seen that the fountain was damaged in the battle, and it flashes past unnoticed in the movie. It's not terribly important, but I felt that the novel's depiction of the destruction of that fountain foreshadowed the threat to the Wizarding way of life that Voldemort's return represented, so it seemed like a significant omission in the film.

One thing that DIDN'T work for me was Dumbledore protecting Harry by repeatedly shoving him back with magic (do not be too disappointed when I tell you that the fountain statues do not leap to life). Harry and the DA have spent the whole movie wanting to fight, yet here's Harry cowering in a corner while Dumbledore protects him. While true to the book, bringing it to film really made the contradiction stand out.

About Voldemort I have mixed opinions. When depicted in a black suit in Harry's dream sequence (if you didn't realize that the preview of Harry-seeing-Voldemort-at-King's Cross was a dream sequence I regret disillusioning you) I thought the character merely looked silly. However when swooping in from mist or breathing fire, He Who Must Not Be Named looked pretty frightening.

The sequence where Harry casts out Voldemort with the power of love was both rather dragged out, and also missed the opportunity to have him picture Ginny (I know he doesn't picture Ginny in the novel, but he also does not writhe around in powdered glass while Dumbledore kneels over him muttering New Agey advice, either).

I was very pleased to see that the scene between Luna and Harry following Sirius' death was almost completely intact. It's a charming scene in the book and it worked equally effectively here, including Luna skipping away at the end. Not only does Luna steal scenes, but the director was sly enough to imply an attraction between Harry and Luna. While it does not exist in the book, it comes across quite naturally in the movie.

Summary
While a number of individual bits didn't work for me, I thought the movie was entertaining and effective. I was impressed with the way the director took ownership of the story and made some big, bold, and risky changes to the plot - I thought the vast majority of these worked well.

One in particular was a new scene were Fred and George comfort a first-year who has had to do lines with Umbridge: this offered a caring look at the twins that not even the novel has provided.

The last two movies have suffered under the impossible burden of cramming 750 pages (okay, Maria, 870) of text into 2.5 hours of film, and -as movies- I don't think they are as good as the more leisurely first three. Where the first three movies could be watched by anyone, I think the last two could only be followed by someone who had read the books. Given those constraints however I thinkg OotP is considerably superior to Goblet of Fire. It's hard to compare it to the first three, but it is certainly an entertaining and worthwhile film.

Grade
If it weren't for the quality and nerve of the direction, I would give it a B+ - however I think Yate's command of the story bumps it up to an A- The biggest flaws were mumbled bits of dialog, bad CGI, and some substandard acting from what is admittedly a gigantic cast sharing a small window.

(If I were a complete Potter geek I would have given the movie an "O-" over an "E+," but as you can see I have refrained from doing so. There is hope for me yet!)

Posted by Albatross at June 29, 2007 12:28 AM | TrackBack