Pottering About

I enjoyed the first two or three Harry Potter books. Four I found long, five bleak, six turgid. The films are worse. The first two were as short on magic as they could possibly have been - where the books zipped along, the films plodded. I mean, sure, there were great ideas, and sure, they were "faithful" to the ideas and kind of looked like we all though the books meant them to look like...

But kids and adults together enjoyed those early, derring-do books. The movies were strictly for the kids. Shame.

Movie number three escapes my memory entirely; number four was pleasingly different, but still as episodic as the book and without the ability to put it down and go away and do something else for a while, it felt like an old fashioned Saturday morning serial all rolled into one big (slightly indigestible) slice.

Why carry on going back for more? It's my nature. I am a collector. If I start something, I finish it. They have just released season 8 of ER on DVD, and I almost bought it, but money is a bit tight this month. I have seasons 1 through 6; 7 is turgid, but 8 is better. Maybe another time. I got the final season of West Wing the other week - not to watch, you understand, just to complete the set.

So I went this morning (day off!) to see the fifth film. And blow me down, it's a great film! Far and away the best of the series - in a completely different league from all the others.

Now, I need to stop getting carried away. First, all the others have done the ground work. So if you go in without all of that, the Dursleys and Cornelius Fudge and the Weasleys and Azkaban and even the friendship between Harry and Hermione and Ron might all seem strange. Without having read the book, Sirius' fate could be rather mysterious. But let's presume that most people have a passing knowledge of these things. If you are starting the series, number 5 is not the place to start, but it is most certainly one to look forwards to!

The look of the film has a confidence, the effects have a place to enhance the story (not to dominate), and the episodic feel of the books has been jettisoned by a script-writer who has finally decided "hang on, this book is too big to be a movie - let's just make a decent movie using the core of this material". It's so long since I read the book I have no idea what has gone and I couldn't care less - they made the right choices. It is a film! It has a beginning (excellent Dursley sequence), middle (great new character in Imelda Staunton's gloriously pink Dolores Umbridge) and end (stunning), the characters develop, though some are made more minor as in neccesary in a film.

Sirius' fate is beautifully done - not overplayed, but heart breaking, and not dwelt on as the action moves on to the next sequence which is superb. There's a fair amount of flash-back going on, (and even Snape comes out of this as more human) and Harry's use of memory to fight Voldemort was great. Nice message about love, friendship and joy - the good things we have - beating hatred in the world. Perhaps our Security Minister might go watch this film and learn something?

It's not the best film ever, it's not the best film this year. It is the best HP film so far; it is the only HP film so far that stands up as a real film and not just a "film of a book". If you have grown weary of these movies, go see this one, it's worth it. It kept me on the edge of my seat & I was almost tempted to buy another ticket and watch it all again.