Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

It's kind of a strange sort of irony that I just recently finished readingthe Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire book just a day before seeing the movie, as that was the book where I'd first come across the Harry Potter phenomenon.  I'd written it off as just another kiddy fad like Pokemon at first, but shortly before Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone was released I'd finally decided to give the books a try, and I was hooked from the first page.    It's been the same way with the film series until this point, hooked from the first frame to the last .  So how does this Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire stack up against the previous films?

First time Harry Potter director Mike Newell had the monumental task, along with screenwriter Steven Kloves (Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, Chamber Of Secrets, and Prisoner Of Azkaban) of adapting J.K. Rowling's 734 page novel to the big screen, and to be fair the movie already clocks in at 157 minutes.  The movie feels as though you are watching the novel truly brought to life, albeit a beat up, hand me down copy with pages missing.   For example, the movie starts out as the novel does, with an on-the-road-to-ressurection Lord Voldemort, the infamous dark wizard who killed Harry's parents, ending a hapless caretaker's life with a flash of green light.  Then, next thing, we meet up with Harry as he explores the magical tent of his friends, the Weasley family. They are attending the world quidditch championships and we get to see the teams being introduced and a brief aftermath of the championship.  The revelry is punctuated violently when Voldemort's followers, the Death Eaters rain down terror as they rampage through the campground.   It's all very interesting, but also all very rapid fire in execution.  It's similar moments like this that plague the rest of the movie, leaving it to feel a bit rushed, even at an almost three hour running time.

The main problem with the movie, and the franchise at this point, is that they're sacrificing a lot of the smaller moments (i.e. the later conversations with Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) or the majority of Rita Skeeter's (Miranda Richardson) libelous reporting)-- moments that pay off later in the series-- for the story directly at hand here.  It is my opinion that from this moment on in the series, the movies are going from excellent film adaptations to just decent.  Since the books get increasingly longer, the filmmaker's are going to just have to cut more stuff out.  I wish though that Warner Brothers and the filmmakers were treating the series as a franchise, like the Spider-Man series, rather than like the James Bond series, where each movie is a new adventure with nothing at all really to connect to the previous or future films in the series.

My problems with the movie aside, this is a very well-made production.  The visual effects team really has outdone themselves with this film.  Most notably with the Hungarian Horntail dragon that Harry encounters as his first challenge in the Tri-Wizard Tournament he gets sucked into.  It's an all CGI creation but it really feels like a threatening prescence for Harry to defeat.   And the cinematography by Roger Pratt (Chamber Of Secrets, Troy) is also top notch in the film, especially during the forementioned dragon chase sequence where you feel as though you're right there with Harry as he swoops and tries to get away from the dragon on his broomstick. 

Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire is the turning point of the series, the coming of age of Harry and the gang so to speak, and the cast does a superb job of bringing that to bear.  It's been a brilliant casting decision to keep the same actors in the roles throughout the series, so you can see Harry grow up from film to film.  Here he and his friends are fourteen and in the throes of racing hormones, which make for some great scenes that remind the viewer of their own junior high school experiences with finding a date to the dance and other such awkward scenarios.  Rupert Grint does an excellent job playing Ron Weasley, Harry's best friend, and he nearly steals a few scenes.  And speaking of the Weasleys, his twin brothers Fred and George (Oliver and James Phelps) have some great comic moments throughout the movie, providing the film with a sense of humor to lighten up the darker aspects of the story. 

I was glad to see that my favorite character of the book, the new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher, "Mad Eye" Moody, was played to perfection by Brendan Gleeson (28 Days Later), though I wish they didn't all but reveal his big secret about midway through the movie.  The way they hinted at it throughout the first half of the movie was clever and very well done, but then they just spell it out to you before revealing it, as though the audience isn't smart enough to figure it out on their own.  But also in the same token I did like how they didn't feel a need to talk down to the audience when it came to referencing things from previous movies.  They trust that we as an audience remember characters or events from before.   

And on one last note I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ralph Fiennes preformance as Tom Marvolo Riddle, better known as Lord Voldemort.  He's barely in the movie, but he's a definite presence throughout the story, and when he finally appears on screen he fills it with a sense of menace so that you know nothing's going to be same in the Harry Potter world again. 

Final

As you can tell from the review it's hard for me to say one way or another whether I liked the movie or not.  Well scratch that I did enjoy the movie, but I'm dissapointed it's not the movie it could have been had it kept more of the moments from the book in.  I wish they would at least shoot the extra stuff, and then put out an extended cut later on like the Lord Of The Rings movies did.  That way both regular movie fans and the extreme fans of the books like myself can be happy.   I'd sit through a 12 hour adaptation if that's what was neccessary to tell the complete story, because there's a lot of moments that happen in the book that pay off later on in the series that just aren't going to pay off now when it comes time for the remaining movies.   But in summary, if you're just a fan of the movies you'll enjoy the movie more than if you're a fan of the books and the movies. Either way it's well worth seeing though.   Till next time, be sure to keep it reel.