Captain Oblivious

The Captain and The Doctor give it two thumbs up.

We saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight. We both enjoyed it a great deal. Good enough?

Oh, all right. I'm no Duffbert, but here's a bit of a review. I suppose if you've managed to avoid reading the book and have also avoided every other review of the movie, a word or two of this could be considered spoiler-iffic. So stop reading now if that's an issue. Or suffer. Your choice.

I've seen several reviews of the movie so far, and they are mostly lukewarm. People are saying it isn't one of the better Harry Potter movies. They're saying it dragged, that it didn't accurately reflect the angst-ridden Harry of the book, and that the romance between Harry and Cho wasn't very, well, romantic.

I say they're all full of it. This wasn't Gone with the Wind, but it was a very good Harry Potter movie. I don't know how you could think it dragged, I didn't want it to end. The scary parts were quite scary (the Dementors were very well handled), the romance was sufficiently awkward to be believable from kids that age, and the bad guys were truly nasty. Creepy, in fact. This movie franchise has done a very nice job on the villains overall, and Order of the Phoenix is no exception. I thought Harry was very much the Angry Young Man that he was written to be. Snape (Alan Rickman) was brilliant, as usual. Fred and George Weasley's final act of rebellion was great fun, although it happened at a different time than it does in the book. And speaking of the inevitable plot changes, most of them are not noticeable (unless you're looking, which I was) and all of them are clearly aimed at telling the most accurate story possible without making a 10 hour movie.

So, to sum up: a very good movie, and certainly a great way to whet your appetite for book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, due out Real Soon Now.