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When we were offered the chance to screen the new Harry Potter film a full two days before it opened to the general public, we leapt at it. We're geeks, people, and getting a full two-day jump on Order of the Phoenix thrilled us down to our very souls.
Standing in line for the screening, though, we got a little nervous. Order of the Phoenix has so far been our favorite book in the series, and it's an 870-page colossus of a book. How could a film possibly condense all of that story into a two-and-a-half-hour movie and have it both make sense to those who haven't read the books (and if you're one of them, what's wrong with you? You're missing out. Go pick them up, now. We'll talk to you in a month when you've finished reading them all. Your family and friends will miss you, but it will be worth it) and not irk diehard fans who are still kind of furious that Hermione's Yule ball dress was the wrong color in Goblet of Fire. (Ahem. It would have killed you to put her in blue?)
Now that we've seen it? Awe. Some. Imelda Staunton is terrifying and hateful as Dolores Umbridge, the ministry stooge with a heart of pink iron. (When we say she is terrifying and hateful, we mean that we kind of had to resist the urge to chuck our popcorn at the screen several times. Staunton does an absolutely fantastic job with the material and makes an utterly convincing and horrible villain. We love her, but we hope she understands that we're not speaking to her for a little while.) Daniel Radcliffe has grown a bit as an actor - we've criticized him in the other movies as only having a handful of expressions ('thoughtful/upset/concerned/girl-crazy/shy/hungry' and 'laughing/playing Quidditch') but he pulls off what fans have referred to as 'CAPS LOCK HARRY' (Harry shouts in this book. A lot) well enough that we only winced at his delivery a few times. Given that we spent most of Goblet of Fire embarrassed for a Radcliffe who seemed over his head, this is a marked improvement.
Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) have learned to play off of each other quite nicely, and are chiefly responsible for some of the film's best reaction shots, although Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) gets off a few of her own. Newcomer Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) is simply fantastic in a role that could have easily been over-the-top, slapstick or grating. She's got her head in the clouds with her bare feet on the ground.
Parents should be warned that this isn't the happy, sunshiney kind of Potter movie their kids may be used to. Remember how Prisoner of Azkaban was kind of scary, and the Dementors freaked everyone out? Well, they're back, and they're extra scary. (No joke, we jumped about three feet out of our seat when they showed up, and we were expecting them.) Add a homicidally insane Bellatrix Lestrange (played deliciously crazily by Helena Bonham Carter) and a major character's death, and parents might want to think twice before taking small children to see this movie. At the very least, parents should see it first to determine whether they think their children can handle it.
It's not as screamingly funny as some of the other films have been, and that's to be expected. Order of the Phoenix is the part in the series where the books go dark and stay there. Don't go in expecting a laugh a minute. Do, however, go in expecting a loving retelling of a pretty great book. (If you're like us, you should also go in expecting Neville Longbottom to break your heart and expecting Ron Weasley to be twelve kinds of awesome. We desperately hope we are not being set up to be heartbroken when the seventh book comes out next Saturday.) You should also go in expecting some pretty spectacular flights across London.
We're trying to avoid giving too much away in terms of the plot of the movie, especially in this week of the Potterdamerung, but we can tell you that the set designers outdid themselves with the Ministry of Magic. More than once, this Phillyist and her companion leaned over and whispered that the set looked exactly as it did in our heads. The designers are also to be commended for taking Rowling's description of the Ministry in the days following the events 
of Goblet of Fire from 'vaguely fascistic' to 'outwardly fascistic,' almost to the point of making the viewer uncomfortable with large, billowing portraits of the Prime Minister hanging throughout the Ministry and an overt 'Either you're with us or you're against us' policy.
Go see this movie. If you're a fan of the movies or the books, we wholeheartedly suggest seeing the movie early with the die-hard fans, because the whooping and cheering and applauding makes an already wonderful movie great.
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