The first two flicks were directed by Chris Columbus and they were geared towards the younger audience.  Then, Alfonso Cuaron came along and spun the whole series around with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  I just loved how dark that film was.  You may know Cuaron’s other work, like one of my favorite films from 2006, Children of Men.  He also did a Spanish flick called Y Tu Mama Tambien.  For the fifth film in the series, a director named David Yates has taken on the task.  It is seriously amazing all the different directors the series has gone through.  Yates will also be directing the sixth film, which might not be the greatest idea, considering Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was nothing to write home about.  The entire Harry Potter crew is back for the fifth installment, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Gary Oldman (my boy from True Romance and The Professional), Ralph Fiennes and Michael Gambon.

The Plot: If you have not seen the other films, you will be extremely lost.  To give the most basic background that I can give, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is a young wizard whose parents were killed by Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes).  Lord Voldemort was “killed” by Harry and thought to be gone forever.  When Harry was born he was left on the doorstep of an extremely annoying family.  Once he reached a certain age, he was sent to Hogwart’s, which is a school for young wizards.  As the story continues, we start to learn about Harry’s dark past and the fact that Voldemort has come back to kill him. 

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is now 14 years old and his past is now coming back to haunt him.  When the film starts, Harry gets in trouble for using a spell around a “muggle”, which is considered a normal human being.  He is almost expelled from Hogwart’s, but Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) takes his back and gets him in reinstated into Hogwarts. 

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, we saw the return of Lord Voldemort and Harry had to fight him off.  Since the fight, Harry has been telling people that the dark lord is back.  The “Ministry of Magic” apparently has been feeding the newspapers that Harry must be lying about the return of the dark lord.  To keep people from getting scared, the “Ministry of Magic,” sends a woman named Dolores Umbridge to monitor the school.  She is a really annoying woman who tries to tighten up the school and take away the learning of defensive magic.  To make a long story short, Harry learns that he is somehow connected to Voldemort, and the film shows his struggle with this. 

The Review: Overall, the movie was completely uneventful and did not have enough special effects and action sequences like its predecessors.  One thing that I really love about the series are the amazing special effects and intense action sequences.  There were only a few good ones in this movie, with the majority of the movie being dialogue and Harry’s struggle with his mind and Voldemort.  The coolest action sequence of the entire film was the battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore.  The combination of their powers on screen was so awesome. 

I don’t know if it just me, but I was looking for more of the cool stuff from the earlier films, i.e. Quiddage and the cool maze games.  I seriously looked down at my watch about an hour and forty five minutes in the film and looked over at my friend Lauren and basically said, is anything going to happen in this movie?  I just felt like the movie was a waste.  It only kept me interested throughout because I was waiting for some big action sequences and some big discoveries, i.e. where Harry Potter’s scar came from and why he had this connection with Lord Voldemort. 

The Verdict: The film just felt really bland to me.  I just walked out thinking,“What really happened?”  Now, was the movie just downright awful?  No, because it was interesting and neat to watch, but I just felt like it took too much time to explain what they wanted to explain.  I give the film 3 BDK’s because I feel that is it not worth wasting your money to see in theatres.  I would wait for the rental and hope that the sixth film is a lot better. 

Side Note: Just to let you know, I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, but people who do read the series have been telling me this was a very information driven book with not a lot of action.  In that case, I am happy to say that I have not read that book.  I wouldn’t mind going back and reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire