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GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 7/9/07)

With five films down and two to go, the Harry Potter series looks as if it's going to turn out to be the least odious movie franchise ever. (And let me just state here, Lord of the Rings fans, that I consider a franchise to be completely distinct from a trilogy, and the Rings trilogy still rules.) True, if you're not much into this sort of thing you're not likely to care, but I'm fairly impressed that the series hasn't produced one outright dog of a picture in five goes. True, the first two pictures, directed by Christopher Columbus, allowed said director to indulge his sub-Spielberg tendency to sprinkle fairy dust over every moment of putative wonder, but the stories and casts provided enough genuine wonderment to counter that. Once Alfonso Cuarón came in for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a steadier, darker tone got set. In all, I think credit is due to Warner, the studio behind the series, and the series' producers David Heyman and David Barron, for maintaining a consistency of tone and a faithfulness to the source material — J.K. Rowling's wildly popular novels — as well as to the spirit behind it.

Of course, it's not as if they had much of a choice. Rowling strikes one as a confident, strong-willed creator, and as for the Potter fans, they have proven to be both discerning and vocal — hardly unsympathetic to the idea of movie versions of the Potter books, but ready to boycott any attempts to Hollywoodize their favorite prose fantasies. If you work backward from the dictum that a great artist works for a great audience, you could conclude that Rowling is in fact a great artist. And it's her audience that's kept the Potter movies honest.

The latest installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is adapted from what is, at this writing, the longest novel in the series (the seventh and final Potter book arrives in a couple of weeks); as it happens, it's the shortest film in the series, coming in at 138 minutes, about eight of which are credits. Some material had to go, of course — including the introduction of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, and some bits involving new and intriguing Hogwarts student Luna Lovegood — but for the most part this adaptation, scripted by Michael Goldenberg and directed by David Yates, a British television veteran, is a marvel of compression that moves along at a brisk pace without ever feeling rushed.