Click To PlayRead this article here or at the new Scene-Stealers 2.0!!For most kids, one’s teenage years are scary and uncomfortable. For the title character in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” things are a bit more serious. Besides the usual teen problems like burgeoning sexuality, post-pubescent alienation, and low self-esteem, Harry has an evil madman out to murder him.The supernatural element disguises the metaphor for growing up ever so slightly. It is, of course, the central conceit of J.K. Rowling’s sprawling books, and as the number of pages gets higher, the movies are having a tougher time squeezing them all into one cohesive narrative. The last film, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” was a mess, and the fifth installment in this increasingly predictable series has just slightly more focus.Rarely has a movie been so dependent dramatically on an event that happened in the film before it, but new director David Yates is constantly referencing the fateful night when Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) barely escaped a brush with the nasty Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). The politically-motivated Ministry of Magic and virtually everyone in the movie refuses to believe Harry when he tells them the vicious killer of his parents has returned. Never mind Harry’s track record of successes or the unique heritage he possesses.Since we saw Voldemort return in “Goblet of Fire,” we know Harry’s not lying. Why would he? It is rather an annoying device to have him trying to convince people of what the audience already knows to be true throughout the entire film. This part of the script, adapted by series newcomer Michael Goldenberg, is a stiff. Are we really supposed to believe that his mentor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) would abandon him for an entire school year because of this issue? We are not fooled, although the screenplay would want us to be. We know there’s something else at play, and it’s a tedious wait with little payoff when Dumbledore’s reasoning is finally revealed.More successful dramatically is the ever-increasing Orwellian nightmare that is happening at Hogwarts. The new Defence of the Dark Arts teacher is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Dolores Umbridge (played by a catty Imelda Staunton, who steals the show) receives increasing power at the school and is soon enacting strict authoritarian tenets well into the hundreds. In one of the movie’s best visual motifs, the walls lose all their wonderful moving paintings, and must make way for framed edicts that are soon too many even for an enormous castle.Umbridge is all fake courtesy and curt attitude a smiling sadist whose enjoyment while literally torturing the school kids is barely disguised. She takes away the children’s rights, spies on them, and organizes them against each other. Like the best fascist leaders, she has an unwavering moral superiority that gets her through the “tough decisions” she must make while running a tight ship. Staunton makes this fiendishness very funny, eliciting laughs in the most unlikely of moments.Some of Harry’s classmates slowly come to believe him, and he starts training a small army of kids who are ready to fight Voldemort if need be. This offers some relief from an otherwise stagnant main thread. There is also the secret organization known as the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry’s first (and highly anticipated) kiss, which, although devoid of sparks, is interesting enough because of how twisted it isÂit may stem from survivor’s guilt on both parties.As Sirius Black, Gary Oldman is the biggest disappointment. His warmth towards Harry is obvious, but he gets little opportunity to expand his character beyond winking a lot to show his Godson he’ll always be on his side.Definitely the darkest film of the series, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” portrays our little wizard at the height of his unpopularity, ostracized by peers and press alike. For a moment, I was worried he would get all emo like Spider-Man, with a swoop of matted hair, long bangs and eyeliner.The anti-Potter behavior was not explained very well, and perhaps it makes more sense in the nearly 900-page book. But the frustration that arose from the stubborn Ministry’s hard line was also shared by Potter fans at the screening I saw. When, in a crucial moment, Ministry head Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) realized he’d been wrong the entire film about Potter, the whole crowd yelled, at the same time, “Duh!”For too much of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” I felt exactly the same way.