The Hindu : Karnataka News : The Potter magic is on the wane film reviews

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 15, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

The Potter magic is on the wane film reviews

Not so magical : Daniel Radcliffe and his friends in a still from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (English)

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, Imelda Staunton

Director: David Yates

A review of this film is quite redundant. Obsessive fans of the series will watch it anyway and spend forever dissecting the film and nitpicking over which details were left out and why. Cut through all the fluff, the breathless hype and the aficionado hysterics and you have a movie that is extraordinarily workmanlike. The movie follows Harry Potter’s adventures in his fifth year at Hogwarts School. Things have gone from bad to worse as the evil Lord Voldemort has returned to make everyone’s life miserable. To make matters worse, the Ministry of Magic refuses to believe Harry and appoints Dolores Umbridge, with her unhealthy fondness for medieval corrective devices, to teach Defence against the Dark Arts. Harry and friends set up Dumbledore’s Army to be fighting ready while the grown-ups have set up the Order of the Phoenix to battle Voldemort. In the midst of all this, there is Harry’s first kiss and all manner of tricks and jokes courtesy the Weasley twins.There are not many wow moments in the film – there is the final climax with suitable amounts of shattering glass, fire and what not and there is the fascinating telescoping façade. Apart from that there are the standard issue CGI moments, which, now that we are sophisticated movie goers, do not make our eyeballs pop.

Cast wise, there is the best of the British film industry from Alan Rickman (Snape), Emma Thomson (Sybil Trelawney), Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) and Imelda Staunton (Umbridge) to the delectable Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort). The cast is competent, doing what they can with their uni-dimensional characters.

The flat characterisation means you would have to be an exceptional actor to give your character any sort of resonance, and Daniel Radcliffe fails spectacularly in his reading of Harry Potter. Though he has worked out and has a killer body, his Harry has the emotional range of a teaspoon (to paraphrase Hermione). Of all the directors, only Alfonso Cuaron managed a lightness of touch with “Prisoner of Azkaban”. While Yates’ is not as ploddingly worshipful as Chris Columbus who helmed the first two films or as whimsical as Mike Newell who directed “Goblet of Fire”, he does not bring any special magic to the table. More is the pity.

MINI ANTHIKAD

-CHHIBBER

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