Fifth in ‘Potter’ saga moves the story along

Published 7:55 am Tuesday, July 10, 2007

As the world awaits the imminent release of the seventh and final book in the “Harry Potter” saga, the movies are still catching up: “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is No. 5 in the film series.

Like the previous “Potter” movies, this one is dutiful about conveying the gist of J.K. Rowling’s book, almost to a fault. And it carries even more of a sense that the series is really just one long story; this installment doesn’t have a strong enough plot to stand on its own, and requires a thorough knowledge of the previous chapters.

With those restrictions in mind, the news is generally good this time. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) returns for yet another year at Hogwarts, the wizardry school where he is clearly the student of destiny.

The Hogwarts term is marked by a conservative new teacher of magic, the pink-clad terror Dolores Umbridge (letter-perfect Imelda Staunton), who quickly clamps down on self-expression and tries to usurp the authority of Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon).

More importantly, Harry is puzzling out the meaning of his encounter with the evil Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) in the previous installment. This is the uber-plot, which will not be solved in this movie. But whatever it means, that uber-plot requires more involvement from Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), Harry’s godfather.

Thus you get the strange feeling that the scenes that don’t move the plot forward are somehow the most significant in the movie, despite the fact that they seem to stop the movie cold. This is the problem with keeping faith with a long-form literary original.

As always, it is clear that the spell-casting and CGI monsters, while fun, are merely Rowling’s way of dramatizing the problems of adolescence. Harry kisses a girl (in a very underdeveloped subplot), feels the stirrings of rebellion against authority, and – in the film’s most powerful revelation – learns that his father might not have been the paragon of goodness he thought.

The film crams new characters into the already-crowded cast, including an unnervingly composed girl named Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) and the fearsome Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter). The regulars, including Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane and Maggie Smith, have very little to do here.

That even goes for Harry’s sidekicks Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), who have distinctly reduced roles. It’s all in the service of getting the running time to a manageable 138 minutes, shorter than the previous movies.

This is one case where more time might have been worth it. Except for the shaking of Harry’s family tree, the only scenes that really reverberate here are Harry’s creation of a rebel cell within Hogwarts.

There’s a new director, David Yates (“The Girl in the Cafe”) and a new screenwriter, Michael Goldenberg. Except for more British slang, there isn’t a different feel from the previous films, and one assumes J.K. Rowling is still the keeper of the keys.

When the whole series is finished and on DVD (doubtless with deleted scenes, a la “Lord of the Rings”), it will probably be easier to enjoy. Right now, you have to be a devotee of the books and movies to really make sense of Harry’s journey, the ending of which – in print, anyway – will be revealed in a few days.