IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT HARRY POTTER

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Other stars steal the thunder from the world's favourite boy wizard in
this visual feast

THE real star of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which opens in
cinemas today, is not a wizard but a bureaucrat. Sure, Ministry of Magic
official Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) can do magic, but she prefers
to amass power the old-fashioned way - through governmental control.

Staunton, who's appeared in films like Freedom Writers and Nanny McPhee,
is riveting as ambition hound Umbridge in this fifth Potter movie based on
J K Rowling's books about the eponymous boy wizard.

Umbridge is the new, ministry-appointed Defence Against the Dark Arts
teacher at Hogwarts School for young witches and wizards.

She not only literally tortures Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his
fellow students, she even persuades the ministry to boot out Albus
Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), Hogwarts' respected principal, and put her in
charge instead.

The Order of the Phoenix gleefully overturns the concept of power
dressing.

Where dragon lady Umbridge wore a pink cardigan in Rowling's book, here,
she is clad in the girlish hue from head to toe. She pens ever more
poisonous ministry decrees in an all-pink office, where 200 decorative
plates are displayed, depicting mewing, magical kittens.

This visual flair is a big part of the appeal of this film directed by
Briton David Yates - a newcomer to the Harry Potter franchise - where
wizards zoom past London's riverside Houses of Parliament on broomsticks
faster than James Bond in a speedboat.

The dominant palette is black as sin, a quality matched by the palpable
menace of the bad guys.

The screen seems to freeze every time Ralph Fiennes, playing Harry's evil
nemesis Voldemort, appears - despite his missing nose, apparently one of
the hazards of coming back from wizard death earlier in the series.

Voldemort's supporters, his Death Eaters, are just as scary: Lucius Malfoy
(Jason Isaacs) may look like an ageing fashion designer but you know he
means murder; Helena Bonham Carter's Bellatrix Lestrange seems to almost
explode with diabolical joy after escaping from magical prison Azkaban.

Harry here is an angry young man.

His account of Voldemort's return is generally disbelieved and his offer
to fight for Dumbledore's clandestine, anti-Voldemort movement, the Order
of the Phoenix, is rebuffed.

Feeling ill-prepared against the arch-fiend, Harry and his friends -
including his best mates Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger
(Emma Watson) - train in secret to build up their own Defence Against the
Dark Arts, a part of the curriculum that Umbridge has reduced to lessons
in reading aloud. The children eventually confront the evil wizards in a
wand-and-laser showdown.

Newcomer Evanna Lynch is ethereal yet unexpectedly shrewd as Harry's moony
new friend, Luna Lovegood. Radcliffe is believable, but not spectacular,
as the frustrated young wizard. His much-hyped first kiss with witchy babe
Cho Chang (Katie Leung), though, is more prosaic than tender.

However, in the attempt to telescope Rowling's Yellow Pages-like book (the
Bloomsbury hardcover edition has close to 800 pages), the ruthless
necessity of pruning most of what is not crucial to Harry's personal
growing-up tale leaves the audience wanting to see more of star turns like
Bonham Carter. Watson and Grint, especially, have a natural verve that's
under-utilised.

The wizarding life, you realise, shouldn't be all about Harry.