Harry Potter and the Hairdos

While double scheduling the evening of July 14th -- nephew's engagement party and Girl Scout Mother-Daughter Swim, both at 7 p.m. -- my eye slid to July 11, also doubled scheduled, uniform sale at Our Lady of Greenwood, 1 to 6 p.m., and the day that "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" arrives in theaters.
Getting to both events on the 14th will be impossible.
Attending OOTP and the uniform sale won't.
I am eagerly awaiting author J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter No. 7 later in July, too. (It's on order at my local bookstore.)
The movies are awesome.
But mostly I'm glad to see Hogwarts finally has a barber.
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was marred by way too much hair, way too long.
Long hair is part and parcel of being a witch or wizard. The adult actors wear their locks longer and carry it off, from Headmaster Dumbledore to Potions Professor Snape, though a bit greasily in his case. But the young teens peering from behind their waves of hair irritated me to the point that it nearly distracted me from the action.
Am I carrying this peeve too far?
The angst and self-consciousness common to the early teens is captured and portrayed in part by these hairdos.
Hermione finally finds out how to tame her tresses that threatened to make her look like a mushroom in the early movies. Pulling it back from her face, with tendrils softening the edges, made Hermione look older, more mature, wiser, more appealing, especially to the older love-interest character, Viktor. Each of these traits was important for her to convey since they are developed more fully in the book, GoF.
Harry's poufy hair still had to look untameable and try to stick up as described in the book. The cut reinforced the youth that Harry had to fight, being a much-younger boy in a magical contest for adult-age wizards.
But the hair on the Weasley actors heads! Argh!
Fred and George looked perfectly fine. Their straight hair hung much like older teens hair should. The cuts emphasized their malleable mugs on the jokesters.
Ginny Weasley's 'do I despair of. It was thin and unkempt, the length doing nothing to help the mousy air about her. Comparing the actress to Emma Watson, it's really hard to see how Ginny will metamorphosize into a young girl that could turn Harry's head. In OOTP, Ginny is compared several times to a cat, sleek and tossing her long hair in ways that a tigress might. I haven't seen much of the trailers, but it doesn't seem that the directors have helped that metamorphosis along.
But it was Ronald Weasley's (Rupert Grint) hair that drove me crazy. His wavy auburn locks are exactly the kind of hairdo that actress playing his sister needs.
But seeing him peer, sullen, angry and one-eyed, from the wall of hair, with its one wave that seemed to be a solid mass, made me want to scream.
We all know or have seen kids like that. Their hair is a curtain protecting them from the world, a place where they can hide and think their dark thoughts.
This is probably exactly the image the directors wanted to convey. GoF did drive a deep wedge between Harry and Ronald. But their reconciliation on screen didn't take away that awful head of hair Ron had.
From a couple of trailers I have seen, the warriors against evil seem to have visited the barber or hair stylist a couple of times.
Shorter hair make fighting the Death Eaters easier, I'm sure. All that exertion and running around makes you sweat, and you don't want heavy, sweaty hair hanging in your eyes and plastered to your neck making you hot and uncomfortable. Avoiding a hex or jinx is harder when you have to push your long hair out of your eyes.
Longer hair for the young teens will still be in evidence somewhere. There is a lot of angry and angst in OOTP to be communicated. Rowling used sentences in all upper case to convey the anger and yelling, most of it by Harry. Yelling is easier to do in the movies, though.
I can't wait until July 11th. Seeing the book brought to like on screen is a double-edged sword. There are things that will pop up, like all that long hair in the previous movie, that readers may not even considering when "seeing" the story in their minds.
Maybe I'll try to find a midnight screening, to avoid the double-scheduling.