Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the movie!)

So last night Craig decided he would take me on a date (crazy boy that one) to see the latest edition in the HP movie series. We got to the local movies early (about 30 minutes before the show) even though we had bought tickets earlier in the day to be sure we got a seat-- and I am glad we did. The place was PACKED-- jam packed. The movie finally begins-- and other than questioning how some people were raised (the 30+ woman behind me with the dry crackly feet who thought the head rest of the seat in front of her was the place to put her nasty feet-- the 17 year olds behind me who giggled and chatted and looked at their glaringly bright cell phones every 2 minutes etc) most of the audience was pretty good. (and thankfully QUIET!)

The movie got going, and not 20 minutes in, the film starts to skip-- the bottom half of the picture was on the top half of the screen and all-- it was just unpleasant to watch. Eventually someone in the audience (after ~3-5) minutes of this got up and went to find an employee to fix it, they did and then 45 minutes later it happened AGAIN. Same result-- a person on an end eventually went out and asked for it to be fixed. The film also went blurry a few times and the sound level was poorly managed. After the movie let out, I went to find the manager. I was pretty displeased that for the crazy price of movie tickets, they could not have someone to WATCH the projectors to be sure they worked. I know when Grammam worked at the movies when I was little and we used to "help" that someone was usually up there to keep an eye on it all. So I explained to the manager that this was unreasonable and I was unhappy with the theater. She tried to get out of it for about 2 seconds and then asked if we wanted a refund. Well yes, thank you I would-- but I would rather have not had my movie repeatedly disrupted! She gave us back the money we had paid for the tickets and we left the theater. Craig's comment on the whole thing "I should take you out more often, you're a cheap date!".


Now, on to my thoughts on the movie itself--
I enjoyed it, I found it better than Prisoner of Azkaban on details-- and a good bit more accurate on plot than the goblet of fire movies-- so that was a nice surprise. I was disappointed in the scenes selected to be cut from the film-- some of my favorite parts of the book were missing. As always-- the movie did not explain everything as fully as the book-- and took a few other liberties-- but I think the general plot was pretty close to the book. I was sad to see the fight scene clipped at the end-- but I understand not everyone wants to sit through a 6 hour HP movie like I would (crazy folks out there apparently some of them have LIVES!?!?!) Umbridge is delightfully evil and bureaucratic-- and very very pink. Really a scream. Kreacher gets cut out a lot, which is kinda sad-- he was funny in the book.

So overall-- I would give the movie a 3/5 on accuracy to the book, but I would rate it a 4 or maybe a 4.5 out of 5 in terms of fun and enjoyable movie. So go on, go see HP#5-- its fun, exciting and a little spooky.