Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

*** Stars

Harry Potter is getting older. And in this film, you can tell.

It is clear now that no one but Daniel Radcliffe can be Harry Potter. His performance is stronger in every film and here the film knows it. This is a movie for Harry and by Harry.

As his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry approaches, 15-year-old Harry Potter is like any other young teenager, complete with regular outbursts of rage, a high school crush, and rebelling against the establishment. It's been yet another infuriating and boring summer with the despicable Dursleys, who in the beginning found him on the porch of their house, took him in and treated him like total scum. Harry is feeling especially edgy at the lack of news from the magic world, wondering when the freshly revived evil Lord Voldemort will strike.

When he returns to Hogwarts, Harry sees that things are no longer the same. Hermione Granger (Emma Thomson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) are back along side Harry as all three get older and wiser, but this time Hermoine and Ron seem to be in the background and are only there when Harry needs him.

But it sort of works well that way here. This part of the series, from what I've seen is Harry's transition into something much worse and hateful and the film realizes that it needs to show this part through the eyes of him and not his friends.

I have just started to read the Harry Potter Series, so I don't know what's missing from this film, but as a person who has yet to read the Order of the Phoenix, I still find this Potter flick a success. Although I'm sure some readers must be missing a lot of their favorite moments given that this book is the longest of them all (pushing 800 pages) and the film version is the shortest of them all (2 Hours 18 Minutes).