Harry Potter & TOOTP Review

My family met about 5 other kids/teens from our church at our local theater last night at midnight for a sneak preview of the new Harry Potter movie. Before I review the movie let me say that, yes, I am a youth pastor who encourages people to read and watch Harry Potter. The books are absolutely fantastic and the movies are pretty great, too. I know there are a lot of Christians out there that strongly discourage this. They will say that it is Satanic or demonic or whatever. This is simply not true. In fact, I have never met a person who makes these statements that has actually read the books. I'm sure there are some out there, but I have been reading and discussing these books for almost 9 years now and haven't met even one. Some Christians will say that it promotes witchcraft or wicca. But the same Christians will embrace movies/books like Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Wizard of Oz and these have the same elements. They will say Harry routinely breaks the rules and sees no consequences for doing so. This is sometimes (but not always) true, but the same people would have no problem letting their children watch The Little Mermaid where the moral of the story is "if you disobey your parents you will find love and become a princess". These are harmless works of fantasy/fiction. If a parent does the work of a parent and teaches their kid to distinguish between fact and fiction and wordly and Godly values, then the stories should be able to be enjoyed by the whole family. I will, however, add one caviat. The movies are getting progressively scarier and you may not want to show them to really young children.

The Order of the Phoenix was a great movie. It kept me on the edge of my seat. It was humorous. It was really dark and creepy (always a plus). My only complaint is that this movie more than any of the others will be hard to follow if you haven't read the book. They turned an 870 page book into a 2 hours and 10 minute movie. There were so many wonderful plot points and comedic moments that were left out. The movie moved a little too fast in order to keep the time down. But it was still good. Go see it if you get the chance.