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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 12 July 2007

Imelda Staunton makes an explosive entrance at Hogwarts as Professor Dolores Umbridge

Harry and the wicked scene-stealer

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
Directed by David Yates
Certificate 12a

LIFE isn’t getting any easier for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), now a full-blown adolescent with a whole new set of problems as he finds the forces of darkness gathering around him in the fifth of the phenomenally successful adventures of the young Wiz-kid.
Harry is in his fifth year at Hogwarts, and doing his best to prepare for his Ordinary Wizard Level exams. But it it’s hard work when your lifelong enemy the Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) comes back from the dead to haunt you, and equally off-putting when that attractive Oriental girl Cho Chang (Katie Leung) keeps casting flirtatious looks across the classroom.
Harry himself seems more sombre than usual, too. More disturbed, and full of angst as he fights the inner demons that haunt him. He has bad dreams. His sense of foreboding fills the screen with disquiet. Indeed, his eyes blinking behind the owl-like spectacles seem darker, his face paler.
“I feel more alone than ever,” he laments to his long-time girl friend Hermione (Emma Watson), as we are drawn into his inner world.
His arch-foe Voldemort has risen from the ashes and is “out there” somewhere, though no one at school believes it – apart from Hermione and his chum Ron (Rupert Grint).
But closer to home there’s a brilliant newcomer in the loathsome shape of Professor Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), a sadistic enforcer for the corrupt Ministry of Magic who takes an instant dislike to young Harry and adds further misery to his stressful life. With her psychotic giggle, violent mood shifts and a bad taste in purple clothes, Imelda steals every scene she’s in – and the picture too.
To balance the mood there are moments of joyous escapism, like an exhilarating broomstick ride down the Thames and the glowing candle-lit banqueting hall at Hogwarts.
With its layers of suspense and threat behind every scene I found this the most intriguing of all the Potter films to date. It’s a long journey (128 minutes), but the time passes like the flash of Harry’s wand.
Director David Yates pulls out all the stops to deliver another spell-binding package in
JK Rowling’s box of tricks. I relished every magic moment of it.

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