Harry Potter film 5 review
Jul. 15th, 2007 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI've been thinking about writing this review ever since coming back from the cinema at 1am last night. In the most concise terms, I enjoyed the film.
There were a fair few changes from the book, but for the most part I thought they were good ones. I thought the writing was better than in some of the other films, and all the aspects of the book I thought I wouldn't enjoy on screen were actually done really well. Umbridge was excellent, and so was Luna Lovegood, and I was immensely glad that the Harry/Cho romance was dealt with as perfunctorily as it was. I think the thing that struck me most, though, was how real it felt. The opening, in particular, was shot in a different way to the other films and made the whole thing feel much more like a real-life drama than a fantasy film. All the characters seemed much more like real people than they have before, and that was a really good shift in tone.
However, I wouldn't go so far as to be as enthusiastic as the other people's reviews I've read. As always, I'm well aware that it's not easy to turn a 766 page book into a 138 minute film, and I think the parts of the plot that were altered or jettisoned were well chosen. It just felt as if everything else still wasn't given enough time to develop properly. There were so many characters (both old and new) that were barely on screen - I felt that Luna, in particular, was shortchanged and we never really got the chance to get to know her properly. The whole thing seemed rather superficial, which meant that, for me at least, the climax in the Department of Mysteries lacked impact. I was glad that Harry's repeated tantrums from the book weren't present, but I think the film went too far in the other direction and felt almost clinical in its lack of emotion.
lareinemisere expressed approval that the adult characters were sidelined more in the film than they are in the book, but that was a real disappointment to me, as it's the adult characters that keep me reading the series. I really wish we could have seen more of Lupin, and I think that exploring more of Snape's background through the flashes Harry gets in his Occlumency classes would have been really interesting.
Overall, it was a good film - it was just over way too soon and I was left wishing it had engaged my emotions a lot more.
There were a fair few changes from the book, but for the most part I thought they were good ones. I thought the writing was better than in some of the other films, and all the aspects of the book I thought I wouldn't enjoy on screen were actually done really well. Umbridge was excellent, and so was Luna Lovegood, and I was immensely glad that the Harry/Cho romance was dealt with as perfunctorily as it was. I think the thing that struck me most, though, was how real it felt. The opening, in particular, was shot in a different way to the other films and made the whole thing feel much more like a real-life drama than a fantasy film. All the characters seemed much more like real people than they have before, and that was a really good shift in tone.
However, I wouldn't go so far as to be as enthusiastic as the other people's reviews I've read. As always, I'm well aware that it's not easy to turn a 766 page book into a 138 minute film, and I think the parts of the plot that were altered or jettisoned were well chosen. It just felt as if everything else still wasn't given enough time to develop properly. There were so many characters (both old and new) that were barely on screen - I felt that Luna, in particular, was shortchanged and we never really got the chance to get to know her properly. The whole thing seemed rather superficial, which meant that, for me at least, the climax in the Department of Mysteries lacked impact. I was glad that Harry's repeated tantrums from the book weren't present, but I think the film went too far in the other direction and felt almost clinical in its lack of emotion.
lareinemisere expressed approval that the adult characters were sidelined more in the film than they are in the book, but that was a real disappointment to me, as it's the adult characters that keep me reading the series. I really wish we could have seen more of Lupin, and I think that exploring more of Snape's background through the flashes Harry gets in his Occlumency classes would have been really interesting.Overall, it was a good film - it was just over way too soon and I was left wishing it had engaged my emotions a lot more.
