It's a Kind of Magic

As a big fan of Harry Potter books, my experience with the movie franchise was quite mixed.

I know the old cliche that there's too much on the book to be put into the movie, played some part, but frankly, I'm one of the people who doesn't mind changing the stories from the books in the movie adaptations. In fact, I think one of the biggest mistake in the first two Potter movies: Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the lack of imagination from the director. Chris Columbus seemed too scared to upset the fans of the book, that he practically just copied everything he can from the books into the movies.

What we get then is essentially a collection of the most important part of the books, but with little cohesion and flow as a story. After Columbus switch to Executive Producer, he choose Alfonso Cuaron as the director of third movie, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. His effort was better than Columbus as he's willing to take more risk in adapting the book. He cut out a lot of the subplots, and added his own interpretation of J.K Rowling story. As a result, his movie was much more stylized and darker than the previous two. This is actually not a bad move, because in the book, the story also took a more darker tone. But the story is also much more condensed than the previous two, and the massive cut of the subplots still caused the effect of the story being rushed and non-smooth flow of the movie.

Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire was next in line, and Mike Newell also did an admirable job in adapting the second thickest book in the Potter series. The nature of the story, which was full of action and was more straightforward, enable him to focus on main storyline and cut out most of the subplots. The result was action packed, fast paced movie that was quite enjoyable to watch. The old habit of feeling rushed and jumped flow was still there, but it was managed better than the other three.

The newest Harry Potter movie: Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix is a different beast though. This book is the thickest in all seven Harry Potter books, all 766 pages. The story itself, is drastically different from the fourth book. While Goblet is action packed, Order of the Phoenix is more about character development. The book deals a lot with Harry angst and emotion, as well as his relationships with other characters, most notably with his godfather Sirius Black and his first girlfriend, Cho Chang.

David Yates did a great job in portraying the scared and guilt-ridden Harry, heavy with the burden of defeating Voldemort, and also worrying about his first kiss. If anything, the movie displayed a more likable Harry Potter than the book version. In the book, Harry's anger showed more often than ever, such that he's borderline with being a jerk, which is not the case in this movie. Yates also succeed in making the movie's flow smoothly, and doesn't feel rushed. The cuts and the changes he made paid off handsomely. So despite the enormous number of pages, the slimming down of the story really worked on this one.

However, those who expected the movie to be full of action as the previous one, will be disappointed. But those who understand the premise of the book about character development will understand that the movie is actually channeling what the book is all about, on how Harry Potter grow up from a boy to a man.

If there are any criticism, is that the movie failed to portrayed the ending of the book adequately. In the book, after spending most of it on dealing with emotions and angst, there's a big pay off for action in the end. But in the movie, the action felt cheap and short, because Yates tone down much of this quite considerably, which is quite a let down.

But in the end, it's still an enjoyable movie and to end this review with a positive note, one of the highlights of the movie was the introduction of Evanna Lynch who portrayed Harry's eccentric schoolmate Luna Lovegood perfectly in this movie. She shines in almost every scene she's in, and I can't pictured anyone else in this role. As her role continually increased in future books, I'm looking forward to see her again in the next installment of Harry Potter movies.