This plot summary avoids spoilers for the film and book, but may include spoilers to earlier chapters in the series. Those interested in the fifth movie without having seen the first four may prefer to skip ahead to the Review section.

A confrontation between Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his cousin Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling) is interrupted by the arrival of two Dementors. Harry's use of magic to drive off the Dementors gets him into trouble with the Ministry of Magic. Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) distrusts Harry and his Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) because of Harry's report that Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) killed Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson) and Dumbledore's "Voldemort determined to strike in UK" memo.* (Where in the world did Rowling an idea like that?)

At Hogwarts, Fudge's chief lackey Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) is the new professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. Her approach is entirely theoretical, because Fudge thinks practical magical instruction might help Dumbledore gain political advantage against him. Umbridge gradually increases her authority at Hogwarts, backed by decrees from Fudge. This brings her into other professors, including Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith), Sybil Trelawney (Emma Thompson), Rubeus Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), and others.

Meanwhile, the secret society known as the Order of the Phoenix has set up headquarters at the house Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) inherited from his not-so-lamented family. Others seen at the headquarters include Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Tena), "Mad-­Eye" Moody (Brendan Gleeson), Arthur Weasley (Mark Williams), Molly Weasley (Julie Walters), Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), Kingsley Shacklebolt (George Harris), and Severus Snape (Alan Rickman).

Back at Hogwarts, Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) talk Harry into into working around Umbridge's disapproval of practical Dark Arts instruction, with the approval of Fred (James Phelps), George (Oliver Phelps), and Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright), Cho Chang (Katie Leung), Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis), Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch), and others.

Harry has trouble in school with his usual rivals led Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), and has bad dreams that foreshadow trouble with Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter).

Review

The film is directed by David Yates; I had never heard of him or any of his previous works. He does a good job, but diminishes the story somewhat by setting a lighter mood than the book, particularly in the battle scene near the end. In the book, many characters are injured, several seriously, and one character dies (whose identity was the subject of much speculation before the book was released). In the movie, the feeling that everyone present is in mortal danger is weakened by the absence of serious injuries other than the death scene. The emotional impact of the death is forgotten when the death scene ends. The less-menacing tone of the battle may have been due to producer pressure to keep the movie acceptable to younger children, so I can't fully blame the director for it. However, the director is also responsible for bringing the script to screen, which should include seeing that script holes are resolved. Another shortcoming is failing to consistently bring out the best in the actors. Sometimes the action scenes are a bit too close in, to the point of confusion. Maybe it's an artistic decision, to give the feeling that the audience is inside the action, but I would have preferred a slightly wider view. That's a long list of mostly small knocks against the directing; overall, I rate the directing good.

The screenplay is by Michael Goldenberg, who scripted the admirable 2003 Peter Pan film, but is apparently better known as a playwright. In some ways the script is quite impressive, particularly in stripping down a very large book into a long but not unwieldy movie – the shortest so far, in fact. However, some of the trimming left holes in the story. One example is the firing of a professor; the replacement teacher is not mentioned, which disconnects some context from a later scene related to the replacement. (Less consequential, it also cuts explanation of what happens to that professor's class.) Another example is a romance that develops, but then is dropped from the story without explanation; better to cut the romance entirely than to present it then leave it unresolved. The secret of the important item in the Department of Mysteries is less coherently presented. Balancing the good aspects with the holes, I rate the screenplay good.

Daniel Radcliffe's acting is much better than in the first two movies, but his improvement is less dramatic than it was. In this film, it was mostly very good, but somewhat erratic. Given that he's admirable in quite a few scenes, I'm inclined to blame his not-so-good scenes on the director, for shooting too few takes on some scenes or for failing to choose the right take. I rate his acting good or very good, depending on whether the bad scenes were really his fault. Emma Watson started out as the best of the child stars, and remains the best, although the least-improved. Her talents seem underused in this film, and she still isn't in a class with the wonderful adult cast. I rate her performance very good, but I think she has potential to be even better.

Rupert Grint has enough screen time that it should be easy to rate his performance, but I just didn't get an impression. I can't say whether that's because he was so natural that he just blended in, or if he was so bland that he was beneath notice. Since I didn't see anything conspicuously wrong with his performance, I rate him good, with the possibility that he was better than that but I didn't notice. James Phelps and Oliver Phelps, as Fred and George, weren't quite good at acting, but since their role was mainly comic relief it's better to judge whether they were funny. They were, to the limits of their mildly funny material, so I rate them good. Katie Leung was good in her main scene, and given little to do otherwise, so I rate her good overall.

Evanna Lynch is the stand-out among the child stars. She's so good she stands with the adult actors, and still rates excellent. (I was amused to read that she's a near-obsessive fan of the books. I wonder how much that helped her do the character so well.) The other child stars have too little screen time to judge individually. I'm not sure whether to count Natalia Tena with the child stars or the adults, but either way she wasn't really on screen enough to rate her performance.

The adult stars are wonderful. The stand-out is Imelda Staunton, who is delightfully villainous as Dolores Umbridge. Her costumes were great too. The stand-out among the regulars is Alan Rickman, as the ambiguously menacing Snape. I also like Maggie Smith a lot as Minerva McGonagall, but she had only a few small scenes this time. I can't think of anyone in the adult cast who fell noticibly short of excellent.

We saw the movie in Imax, partly in 3-D. Although we were seated a bit closer to the screen than I would have liked, it looked glorious in Imax. It was shot on 35 mm film, but the digital blow-up process used to convert it to the 70 mm Imax format retained the sharpness. I don't know how that works; given the film I suppose it's best to explain it as magic.

The 3-D portion (the big battle and a few surrounding scenes) had a really effective third dimension effect. There was a hint of ghosting between the left and right eye; I haven't seen that in previous Imax 3-D movies, so I think it's a consequence of sitting closer than ideal viewing distance. The hint of ghosting didn't hurt much – it still looked glorious. The 3-D effect was used more effectively than in Superman Returns.

The effects were cool, but I don't feel like I saw anything new. (Imax 3-D was new to Harry Potter, but not new overall.) I liked the way the film used the geography of the Hogwarts castle, but Umbridge's office was the only new location. The Ministry of Magic was good, but not as interesting as the book's description. The hidden headquarters effect looked like a lesser borrowing of the city in Dark City. Overall, I rate the film very good visually; the Imax 3-D is even better, but still rates very good.

I was also pleased with the music, by Nicholas Hooper. Most of the time it's just variations on the earlier films' John Williams themes, but now and then the new composer goes his own way and does a nice job. I particularly liked the music that played over the end credits, which made it worth lagging behind as the theater cleared. I rate the music excellent.

The excellence of the adult acting (plus Evanna Lynch), the good-enough child acting, the cool visual effects, and great music are not enough to elevate the film above the merely good script and directing. Overall it's good. I wish they could have brought back Alfonso Cuarón.

Rating: The "PG-13" seems about right. I'd call it a mild "PG-13", but not a "PG" because of the violence and a death.

Screening: Monday, 4 pm, Seattle Center area (Pacific Science Center Imax). $10.75: ouch.
Audience: About 40% full, 405 seats. It was a relief that it wasn't sold out like it was yesterday.

Getting there: Unlike yesterday, when we went through ugly traffic on a Sunday, had a long search for parking, and finally encountered a sold-out theater, it was easy this time. Traffic was light for a weekday afternoon, and we found on-street parking almost immediately. One annoyance was that the parking meter station wouldn't take my credit card. I called the phone number on the meter, and a Seattle parking customer service person walked me through it again, and determined that the machine's credit card remote was broken. My wife and I managed to scrounge up $3 in coins between and paid that way, and the problem was solved. Traffic going home was light.

Goodies: We both brought travel mugs of tea from home, and drank them on the way.

Ads:

• Imax 3-D self-promotion - The usual demo thing is pretty good, but dull after seeing it a few too many times.
• Dinosaurs Alive - This Imax 3-D documentary looks really cool.
• Sea Monsters - This Imax 3-D documentary looks somewhat interesting, but I'm not as tempted as with the dinosaurs movie. Maybe they'll do a cooler ad before its "fall 2007" release.

* I know, shame on me for attempting a political joke in a movie review. But the memo was dated 2001 and the book was copyright 2003, so the image of a head-in-the-sand political leader seems to have a pretty obvious source.

Tags: film, review