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Movie of the week: “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” SPOILERS!
Mike Newell decided against the studio’s original idea of adapting the 734 page book into two separate films to be released several months apart, figuring that he could cut enough of the book’s bulky subplots to make a workable film. It was Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) who convinced him.
Keeping that above paragraph in mind, it is certainly no surprise that “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” comes across as even more patchy than its already only loosely connected predecessor “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. And I will repeat what I said back then: “We have a rather jumpy story, pieced together from what obviously were thought the most important scenes in the book”. Even without having read the book beforehand watching the movie, I found something missing in almost every scene. For example, Dumbledore’s explanation for Harry’s encounter with Voldemort was nothing more but a mere quip, so if you didn’t know that Voldemort’s wand “spilled out” all the people he killed with it, you can only assume it. Large parts of the Quidditch tournament were cut, which is not as severe as the all but absolute lack of the romantic envolvements of the teens (Harry and Cho, Hermione and Victor, Ron and Fleur).
Having almost reached its limit with this movie, the future film versions of the Harry Potter novels will doubtlessly even more differ from their original. I suppose it would be better to judge the films as an alternate take on the same subject matter, however the comparison between the two will always be made, and if only because you cannot really grasp the movie as a whole if you haven’t read the book before or after. Having said that, it’s actually not a sign of quality for any movie if the viewer needs to get the background information elsewhere because the director was pre-occupied with presenting as many cool looking effects as possible.
The CGI are pretty well done, especially the dragons are impressive as was the labyrinth, but I was a bit disappointed with the underwater creatures – they looked too artificial to be really threatening. The sets were terrific as we’ve come to expect them (or not; I can never remember if Hogwarts was this close to the lake or not).
Kudos to the actors, especially Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, who played along very nicely in this movie. Rupert Grint annoyed me a lot with his terrible haircut, his whining and Ron’s apparent inability to see what is right in front of his eyes. Lots of time was spent with rather bitter argueing between him and Harry, whereas the interaction and adventure we all love and want was strangely lacking.
The supporting actors did their best to be noticed, but only Miranda Richardson left an albeit far too short impression as obnoxious Rita Skeeter. Snape says three lines, McGonagall about five and Hagrid is busy with flirting with an oddly skinny Madame Maxime, but it would go beyond the scope of the film to give them the time the book granted them.
By and large, “Harry Potter 4″ cannot keep up the expectations raised by both the ads and more importantly the book. Visually stunning but severly lacking the completeness of the original novel, it’s a rather lengthy ride through the Potter-verse with very few emotional highlights.
3 out of 6 Meeps – average