Every Harry Potter movie, ranked by A.V. Club review

Try imagining a universe in which the Harry Potter series existed only in film form. Would audiences still find themselves transported by such thinly drawn characters? Would the imaginations still leap for the nonstop assault of impressively realized but creatively pedestrian special effects? And would the two-and-a-half-hours-plus trek toward an unmasking straight out of Scooby Doo seem quite so satisfying? So far, the series has relied on viewers’ familiarity with Rowling’s characters to fill in blanks that other movies would have to fill for themselves.

Harry Potter begins to lose its grip during an expensive-looking “Quidditch” match, a game that’s like a cross between Rollerball and the pod race in The Phantom Menace, but is about as exciting as watching someone else play a video game. At 152 minutes, the film tries to squeeze in as much of the Rowling tome as possible, but the length grows more oppressive just as it should be gaining momentum for the finale. More Potter movies are in the pipeline, but the franchise seems exhausted halfway through the first.

A long middle sequence of wandering (and grim, gloomy posing) is set against glorious, Lord Of The Rings-like natural backdrops, which unfortunately just heighten the stiffness. The pacing is endlessly aggravating: It’s just as well [director David] Yates didn’t attempt to cram the final book’s action into an eviscerated single film, and it’s admirable how he attempts to stretch out, to patiently build a mood and let audiences feel the characters’ directionless anxiety. But the result is a herky-jerky movie that alternates glacial brooding with unwieldy chunks of exposition and frenzied, rushed battles.

Save for the thrilling opening sequence, there’s not much to remember about the film beyond Staunton (Vera Drake), who masks her bottomless malevolence behind a pasted-on patrician smile. During this transitional stage, Dumbledore’s Army and the Order Of The Phoenix prepare for bigger fights ahead—and presumably, more exciting movies, too.

With its slam-bang-whoosh-giggle-gasp mentality, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire could be a halfway decent thrill ride for newbies to the series. But its less-explanation, more-momentum mentality is really aimed squarely at the fans, who’d likely rather see more well-timed business from their favorite characters than a pile of dreary exposition and reminders about the story to date. For all its length, Goblet Of Fire speeds past all too quickly. But the real accomplishment may be that for all its brevity, it still feels like it tells the important parts of Rowling’s story.

It takes a significant amount of investment in the Harry Potter world to make Half-Blood Prince relevant, let alone sensible; the film makes no concession to newbies, and thankfully spends virtually no time reiterating points already covered in previous installments. But those already involved will find that the series has matured much as the books did. This is the darkest, saddest, most sophisticated Harry Potter film yet.

From the start, The Prisoner Of Azkaban taps into the neato fantasies that have inspired the Potter cult, but it never overemphasizes them, and it relegates many bits of magic to background noise. For the first time, the non-converted may actually see what all the fuss is about.

This is the most epic of the Harry Potter movies, the one that finally dispenses with side-quests and open-ended plotlines and offers up all the final payoffs. That includes satisfying front-and-center roles for too-often-neglected subsidiary actors Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, and Matthew Lewis, as well as a gratifying variety of grand dramatic moments, executed with commitment and style. From an early sequence where Rickman stands in a high tower, coldly surveying the prison camp that Hogwarts has become to a late-film showdown that finds small comic moments among life-or-death conflict, it operates on an intense yet tonally lofty scale suitable for the final act of a series that’s held the world’s attention for more than a decade. Its principal cast members were hired as cute prepubescents and have grown impressively into their adult roles; with this installment, the series itself completes a similarly protracted and rewarding maturation.