A time comes in all muggles’ lives when we must face the hard facts of reality: The tooth fairy is your mother, milkshakes make you fat and – let’s be honest – your Hogwarts acceptance letter didn’t get lost in the mail. The closest a mere human is going to get to the magical world of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter – without devoting themselves to 896 pages of reading, like a certain bushy-haired Hermione – is the big screen, and come July, open fanatics and closet groupies alike will rush en masse to see the latest installment of the modern fairytale phenomenon, “”Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.””
With virgin “”Potter”” director David Yates leading the way, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) enters a fifth year of wizardry school to find his popularity dwindling and a new ruler at Hogwarts, not to mention a terrible new Instructor Against the Dark Arts to get past. With usual entourage Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) at his side, the rebellious Harry, in a true fit of teen angst, fights the system and challenges the Dark Lord by forming a spell-casting militia called Dumbledore’s Army. The characters are getting old fast – evidenced by the quickly aging Radcliffe – so prepare for some bland coming-of-age maturity. But it ends big, with something to help fend off the depression of millions come July 21 (when The Deathly Hollows ends Harry’s story), as the wand-wielding characters spend the last 20 minutes battling in 3-D with enough excitement to please any action-starved fan – or aspiring Quidditch star.
