I forgot how much I loved this movie

Aaaaack!

Down with the OOP, yea you know me

For any other Harry Potter fan out there you'll know that OOP stands for Order of the Phoenix (yes, I left out the "t").

The movie rocked. I had somewhat lower expectations for this installment of the series because this was one of my least favorite of the books. Why? I thought Harry was whiney and stupid for not ever shutting his mouth. In this novel he was the Geroge Bush of wizards since he knows what he should do/say to make things go well for him but just doesn't do it anyway and ends up in trouble (and being uber annoying). I also thought the Dumbledore dissing (DD) Harry part was lame in the book as well. Duh. Dumbledore adores Harry no matter what, so that was just lame meandering.

The movie cut a lot of that sassing out and downplayed the DD, or at least trivialized it compared to the other subplot points living in the movie. So, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would -- which is always a pleasant surprise when you see only about two movies a year in the theater.

What was bad? While I find it hard to criticize anything that brings such happiness, I did think they could have spent some more time on the turning point/more developed relationship with Sirius during the beginning/middle of the movie so the end and next installments might be that much more emotionally charged, but I guess that's not the end of the world.

I also took the opportunity to eat some candy (Red Vines, of course) and pound some caffeine in the theater (I did have to go back to my two toddlers, after all). Red Vines make any movie better, so that's an extra thumbs up for my movie-going experience.

Hoooray for Harry!