Poor old Voldemort. Once upon a time little kids peed their pants at the very thought of mentioning his name. In the first Harry Potter movie we were told that nobody dareth pronounce it, but that didn't stick. He's supposed to represent the crème de la crème of evil, the king of bad, the master oogie-boogie, the numero uno cause of bed-wetting in the J.K. Rowling universe. But really Voldemort is just an endless scowl with a fuzzy nose - in other words, Ralph Fiennes after a busy weekend in Hollywood. Fiennes makes light work of a walk-on role and must be smiling all the way to the bank. Poor old Voldemort on the other hand has reason to feel a little worse for wear, and not just because the kids are splashing his name about with increasing confidence. Five movies in and the Harry Potter franchise has finally found a great villain. Forget about Voldemort's ghoulish looks and cranky aura - he's been upstaged by a woman who wears pink and smiles a lot.
Professor Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) is chirpy, impeccably manicured and brilliantly infuriating; she sips sugary tea, squeaks like a mouse and likes to collect ornamental plates emblazoned with pictures of pussy cats. She's also Hogwarts's Hitler - the new teacher on the block, planted at the school for political purposes by the Ministry of Magic. The head of the Ministry is going batty and maintains a well-oiled delusion that Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) is recruiting an army of youngsters to abracadabra his way into power. Empowered by Ministry rules, Umbridge strangleholds the school curriculum, sniffing out subversive behaviour. She's a symbol of fanatic, expedient authority - the kind of ultra-strict, ultra-right, compassionless, holier-than-thou teacher who will quickly boil the blood of every school student on the planet. Meanwhile Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) has received a tip-off that angry old Voldemort is back in town and whispering in the ear of all things evil, himself recruiting minions. To help prepare his peers for V-Day Harry becomes a teacher and hosts secret classes so that his pals know how to fight back. And to think, he used to be such a nice young boy.
Director David Yates careens between set pieces, darting in and out of rooms at Hogwarts as if it were some kind of scholastic amusement park - it's not hard to see the potential appeal Harry Potter has for school students, or anybody who's ever day-dreamed in a classroom. The Order of the Phoenix is a restless special effects showcase: two and a bit hours of whiz-bang images set to the tune of a plot that moves quickly and smartly enough to sustain its loopy, episodic tone. Sometimes it's a close call, but whenever the story starts to dip Yates condenses another couple of Rowley's chapters and picks up the pace again. It's not as giddy as The Philosopher's Stone or as gimmicky as The Goblet of Fire - like The Prisoner of Azkaban, Phoenix is quick to its feet and always veering towards a questionable aura of darkness and despondency. It's been said again and again and it's true: these movies will scare the shit out of young children. Yates's deftness allows Phoenix an appealing balance between small and large effects: from grandiose, fireball stuff down to quirky bric-a-brac and background filler. The paintings move, the photographs move, the newspaper moves, even the pussy cats on Umbridge's plates move - hardly new inventions for the series, but it's impressive that under the weight of such a bursting mise en scene Yates can still pull off lightness of touch (directing a Harry Potter movie, you can't afford to get too distracted by the pretty wallpaper). There are also moments that are heavy-handed fizzers, like the final action scene that speeds drunkenly into junked-out sci-fi/fantasy (the ending of Roger Corman's The Raven, for example) and slaps together bits of Star Wars, Dark City and DragonballZ, plus some creepy nanosecond flashback montages. Along the way, Potter and co. befriend a lonely giant, and that lonely giant is a dead ringer for the bucktooth kid from Mad! magazine.
Harry Potter (pronounced 'Arry Potter) represents a curious concept for a superhero, in that he ages along with his audience. Despite similarities to Peter Pan - they both fly, and they both jet between alternate worlds, taking their magic with them - Potter is the hero doomed to grow up. In Frank Miller's graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns Bruce Wayne is a leery pensioner, having hung up his superhero shingle many moons prior. Like Rocky Balboa he clambers into the limelight for one last round; with flaky skin, mild arthritis and a bedraggled physique, the new old Batman feels the pain behind every KAPOW. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is apparently our young hero's last hurrah. If J.K. Rowling reneges and gives the world another set of H.P. adventures (not that she needs the money), perhaps she could present the other end of the curb: not the Hogwarts school but the Hogwarts nursing home, where every year Mr. Potter edges a little closer to the grave, getting into all kinds of wacky senile adventures - complaining about his food, taking the wrong pills, putting inappropriate spells on his nurses, riding a plunger instead of a broomstick. He could talk about how when he was a kid, words like "Voldemort" were taken seriously. For now, however, Potter's spritely adolescence will have to suffice.
- Review by Luke Buckmaster
