Lukewarm "Potter" reviews don't bother muggles

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By Bob Tourtellotte

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The new "Harry Potter" movie drew lukewarm reviews on Tuesday heading into its global debut, but millions of "muggles" are expected to ignore the critics and turn out in droves, box office watchers said.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth film in the series based on the best-selling novels by J.K. Rowling about a British boy wizard, opens around the world on Wednesday as one of the summer’s hottest movie titles.

In total, the first four "Potter" movies raked in $3.5 billion in theatrical release, starting with "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" in 2001.

Online ticket seller Fandango.com said advance sales for "Phoenix" were outpacing earlier summer hits "Spider-Man 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End," and hundreds of debut screenings set for midnight Tuesday were sold out.

"These ’Potter’ movies are a phenomenon, not only in the U.S. but worldwide, and I fully expect this film will live up to the box office success of its predecessors," said Paul Dergarabedian of box office tracker Media By Numbers.

That is good news for film studio Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc., which makes and markets the "Potter" films, because so far major critics have been .....continued below

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"Phoenix" finds Harry, portrayed again by Daniel Radcliffe, having to defend his use of magic in his recent confrontation with the evil Lord Voldemort, while his protector, Professor Dumbledore, is strangely distant.

’PRETTY GOOD’

The New York Times said, "Although (it) is not a great movie, it is a pretty good one." And The Los Angeles Times called it "no more than a way station in an epic journey," referring to the fact a total of seven films are planned.

In London, The Times newspaper gave "Phoenix" three stars out of five after its Tokyo premiere and said, "It is a film where the balance of narrative tips from action to intrigue, and there are some that will find that tedious."

To be fair, Web site rottentomatoes.com, which compiles reviews, gives the movie a 74 percent favourable rating. Box office watchers call the "Potter" movies "review proof" because their legions of fans and other muggles -- the term for normal humans in the wizard world -- typically ignore critics.

The first film, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone," grossed $976 million worldwide in 2001, and four years later, the box office for the fourth film, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," slipped only 8 percent to $892 million.

All four films so far rank in the top 20 of all-time worldwide box office champs, and "Sorcerer’s Stone" is No. 4, according to another box office tracker, boxofficemojo.com.

The latest "Harry Potter" adventure to hit the big screen comes less than two weeks before the July 21 release of the seventh and final book in Rowling’s series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Gallows."