Overall reaction: Meh.

The good:
1. It was *way* better than HP4.
2. Dolores Umbridge was played to perfection by Imelda Staunton (who was also quite good in Vera Drake. Just FYI)
3. They handled the angsty Harry bits well–got the idea across without being as over-the-top as the book.
4. I Snape.
5. Tonks gets very little screen time.

The bad:
1. Not enough Snape.
2. Tonks stole my purple hair (it was PINK dammit!)
3. Luna didn’t seem spacey enough to me. Weird, yes. But there was something very genuine about her character in the book that was just missing for me in the film.
4. Too rushed. I realize this was a long book and I can appreciate the difficulties in trying to condense all that to a reasonble-length film, but I still think the film could have been edited much more effectively, such that it felt like they were telling a story instead of rushing to incorporate as many scenes as possible. This complaint extends into problem #3…
5. The movie really can’t stand on it’s own. I saw the third HP film before I read the books, and while there were some confusing bits, the movie was still an enjoyable, standalone film. But this one I honestly can’t see someone watching who wasn’t already thoroughly invested in the series. And if you are thoroughly invested in the series, then the movie is really just a video-montage of the highlights of book 5. More than once in the film I felt like we were just whirling from one scene to the next in an attempt to cover as much of the book as possible. This is not to say that it isn’t still enjoyable, as the scenes in general do seem to do justice to the book. But it still just doesn’t feel very satisfying at the end. I found myself constantly trying to recall the book to mind in order to fill in the blanks and to recall to mind the emotional import of each scene. Sadly, the movie itself doesn’t do a very good job of making you care about anything that happens in the film–you have to care beforehand.

Overall, I was entertained. I was just also left feeling a bit dissatisifed. I know I’m tough to please in general, and I was even tougher to please in this case because The Order of the Phoenix is my favorite book. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that they had all the ingredients here to make a really great movie, and they blew somehow it in the editing. The audience never really gets a chance to pause, catch their breath, and take in what’s happening. This was a real detriment to a story with such an intricate plot. I’m almost inclined to say that the fifth book would actually have been better as two movies. The first could that fully sets up the sinister mechanations of Umbridge and the Ministry in their campaign against Harry and Dumbledore, culiminating in Umbridge’s appointment as Hogwarts’ headmaster. And then the second movie could move a little slower at first, focus a bit more on character development, Voldemort’s plotting, and the resistance of the students and faculty to Umbridge’s reign of terror. Granted, I can see from a Hollywood perspective that this 2-movie plan might not have much appeal, but the slap-dash version left me feeling very emotionally uninvolved. Whereas the book had me wringing my knuckles in anger at Umbridge (and Harry for being so thick) as well as waiting on the edge of my seat to find out what the Death Eaters were up to and how on earth the messy political situation with the Ministry would be resolved, the movie just left me thinking things like “oh yeah, I remember that part,” and “oh, I like how they did that.”

Ah well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see if book 7 will satisfy my Harry Potter itch for a while.