Movie Review: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

This has been a wonderful Harry Potter week for me. This movie came out and I finished Deathly Hallows in 5 hours. Bloody Brilliant. I went and saw the movie with my sisters. One of my sisters is a die hard fan like me so she's read all the books, while the other sister only has watched the movies. So the experience was different for all of us. We were told by the movie-only sister to shut up during the film b/c we kept whispering about how it compared to the book.

There wasn't as much rage in the movie as there was in the book by Harry. It was quite toned down actually. Still the story was quite good with lots of stuff for fans of the book to enjoy. The Ron and Hermoine relationship is sooo obvious. Harry has grown up a lot, him and Ron look better with shorter hair.

Evanna Lynch was cast as Luna and was perfect. Strange and weird but wonderfully cast. She's just like how I pictured her. Jim Dale makes Luna's voice all loopy and deep in the audio books, but I like how she's portrayed in the movie. Imelda Staunton is deliciously evil as Umbridge. I hated Umbridge in the book, best villian ever. I think everyone hated her. Stuanton gets her down to a tee - with tea. Her little cough made me want to go shoot myself. Brilliant casting, she deserves an Oscar nom.

Now of course I know that when you adapt a book into a movie there are things that must change, scenes you must omit because obviously you cannot turn the whole book into a movie.

Some scenes I wish had been made into the movie:
1. Aunt Petunia admitting she knows more about the wizarding world. The scene in the book when Harry appreciates her being his mother's sister made you feel more sympathetic towards her. Cutting it out made their relationship still non existent.
2. More scenes with Kreacher.
3. The "locket". I have no idea how they will incorporate this when they do the 7th movie.
4. More Fred and George.
5. Weasly is Our King
6. Seeing the rift between Percy and the rest of the Weasleys. In the movie he just keeps following Fudge saying nothing.
7. The scene where Harry goes into Snape's mind and sees his father, Sirius, Lupin, Snape and Lily as teenagers. The brief flash we get tells absolutely nothing. It's a pivotal scene in the 7th book so I'm lost.

The one scene that they changed that I did not like at all was that Cho Chang was seen as the person who snitched on the DA. Why in the world they would blatantly change this is beyond me. It makes her look like a b***** because right after she tells on him, she goes and kisses Harry. But I guess you can't have everything. Also why did they have to add that Nigel kid? They could have easily just used up an already named character, one of the Creeveys.

This movie continues to show the darker, political side of the books that have moved the readership from kids to adults. It's quite relevant to what is going on in today's world. Voldermort and his Death Eaters are bad bad people. Although more duels would have been nicer.

I cannot wait til the next movie. I hope they remain mostly faithful to the book. They need to or else it will make no sense. If you have read the books, you'll enjoy the movies and the touches they make just for the readers (the goat in the Hog's Head). I would rank this no. 3 in HP movies (POA, SS, OOTP, GOF, COS) At least now I have something to tide me over now that the books are over...