Harry Potter Month - Mini Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Political changes are a particularly difficult thing to write about when writing a children’s story. All too often it’s the case of portraying one side as the heroes whilst the others the villains, like Amon and Kuvira in Korra. Suffice it to say this is my least favourite of the Harry Potter books, not to say it was bad, but I’ll explain what I mean in the review.

David Yates steps into the director’s chair for this film, he’ll be the director of all the remaining Harry Potter movies. And the daunting trial for this movie is that it’s the longest book of the series, ironically converted into the shortest movie (counting the 2 deathly hallows movies as one anyway)

Movie made $939.9m on a $150m budget, but appraisal was a tad more mixed with a 71% on rotten tomatoes.

Harry Potter Month - Mini Review: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

It’s Harry Potter Month. 

Where I do mini reviews of all but one of the Harry Potter because like hell am I doing long reviews of movies that are within the realms of 2 and a half hours long. In fact, I’m only really doing a long review of half a movie… OK, I’m going off a bit here but let’s just say that the Harry Potter films do question the myth that children have short attention spans.

So where better to start than the first movie: Harry Potter and the Philsopher’s (or if you’re in America Sorcerer’s because... I really don’t care, the books were written by J K Rowling in England, it’s Philosopher’s) Stone.

Released in 2001 the movie was given a $125m budget and naturally was a success, grossing $987m in the box office, the second highest of any of the Harry Potter movies.

Just a final note before I begin, I haven’t reread the books for the purposes of these reviews, I’m judging the film on its own merits, not as an adaptation (although for some intent, I will reference areas of the book that I remember)