Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Movie Review)
This movie really needs no introduction. The Harry Potter Phenomenon has swept the globe and we're all caught up in the fervor. Since then, Scholastic has assaulted us with books, card games, board games, video games and movies. I didn't catch on to the Potter phenomenon until I caught the very first movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. After I saw that movie, I mowed down all four current (at the time) books in a single Thanksgiving weekend and haven't been able to get enough Potter since. After seeing the latest effort, I'm sure this will cement the Harry Potter series of movies as one of the greatest film franchises of all time.
For those that do need an introduction, the Harry Potter franchise is a story about a simple boy (Daniel Radcliffe). While he was a baby, Harry's parents were brutally killed by an evil wizard named Voldemort (a.k.a. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Ralph Fiennes). After dusting off Harry's parents, Voldemort attempted to take Harry's life as well. For some mysterious reason, Voldemort's spell backfired, killing him instead (however, his spirit persisted). Known throughout the underground wizarding world as "The Boy Who Lived," Harry Potter would remain the only known person in wizarding history to survive the Killing Curse. Shortly after the demise of his parents, Harry was hidden, unaware of his own importance and history, by Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Headmaster Albus Dumbledore with his magic-hating, mentally abusive step parents until he reached the age he could attend Hogwarts. Since attending Hogwarts, Harry and his friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) had thwarted Voldemort's attempts to return to life twice. As you'd expect, you can't keep a good villain down.
The Goblet of Fire focuses in on Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts. No longer the freshman and not quite the senior, Harry's fourth year is composed of trials including but not limited to: fire-breathing dragons, new Defense Against The Dark Arts professor Mad-Eye Moody (Brendan Gleeson), deep-lake diving with deadly amphibians, asking his crush out to the school dance and navigating Labyrinth-esque mazes (sans David Bowie).
This year also marks the return of an illustrious event to Hogwarts: The Tri-Wizard Tournament. Hogwarts is to play host to students from the French all-girls Beaubaxton's Academy of Magic and the Hungarian Durmstrang Academy. These students all come to Hogwarts with the hope of entering and winning the tournament, which promises eternal glory to the student that wins. A magical fiery goblet with magical enchantments to ward off ineligible entrants is set in a side hall. Our hero, Harry Potter, is of course, ineligible to participate on account of his young age. The contest is a very dangerous affair and underage students would presumably have no chance at surviving the tournament.
At the appointed hour, the goblet spits forth the names of its most fit entrants: Fleur Delacour of Beaubaxton, Viktor Krum of Durmstrang, and Cedric Diggory of Hogwarts. After the champions are chosen, the goblet spits forth an unprecedented fourth name: Harry Potter. Baffled, Dumbledore and his fellow staff scramble to find out what happened, but Harry can offer no explanation, as he did not have the means to enchant the goblet to produce a fourth name, nor did he have the means to even put his name into it. A flabbergasted faculty then turns to the contest mediator for an explanation. The mediator informs them that the goblet selecting Harry represents a binding magical contract and that he must participate by wizard law.
Thus the movie proceeds along its preordained route. J.K. Rowling has truly created an amazing story and universe for us to follow. The movie breathlessly moves from contest to contest interspersed with slower paced character development and detective work that the Potter series is known for. In particular, our heroes have reached puberty this year and this introduces a level of sexual tension among our beloved characters. One of Goblet's most interesting chain of events is that of the Yule Ball. Our heroes now, in addition to worrying about homework and deadly contests, also have to contend with getting dates. Harry's longtime crush, Cho Chang of Ravenclaw, shoots suggestive looks at Harry throughout the movie.
The movie also introduces some of this tension into the gang's relationship. Specifically, Hermione is asked to the Yule Ball by Quiddich superstar and Durmstrang champion Viktor Krum. Ron quickly adopts a dismissive attitude toward Hermione's choice of date. It becomes clear later on in the Ball scene that Hermione wanted Ron to ask her to the Ball. I can tell you definitively that this development is expanded on in forthcoming books and movies.
Goblet could easily be mistaken for an action movie, as the Tri-Wizard Tournament provides plenty of unique challenges for Harry. Harry is forced to confront a dragon, dive in Hogwarts lake for a mysterious precious prize, and navigate a diabolical hedge maze. All of these contests provide the school champions with varying and unique challenges. On top of that, they provide the movie-going audience with scene after scene of breathtaking daring-do. Harry convincingly swoops around on his broom, the dragons move with grace and spleandor and Malfoy is transfigured into a ferret and levitated by Mad-Eye. All of these examples and more contribute to what is easily the best looking Potter flick yet.
As an interesting side-note, it appears that ILM, the go-to company for visual effects, took little part in this year's offering. The only thing they seem to do is compositing. Instead, most of this year's effects credit goes to Moving Pictures Company. MPC was responsible some of the most showstopping sequences in Goblet so I have every bit of faith that their next big project, X-Men 3 will turn out beautifully.
'Potterites' will find that, as always, quite a bit of 'book stuff' has been cut out, some of it important, some of it unimportant. Specifically, there is one very important event near the end of the movie that happens with in a special case 'interaction' between two wands that the movie offers no explanation for whatsoever. I found when I was reading the books that this was a very important point to the overall plot of the books and I am severely disappointed to find that it has been left out of the movie.
These books were designed to age along with the children that read them and thus so are the movies. Going along with that, the movies and the books have slowly introduced more mature content. Goblet is significantly darker than earlier books in the series and the movie follows suit in this regard as well, including the first death of a student on-screen. This single event, more than any other in Goblet, illustrates the dark direction the series is heading in. If it worked for Star Wars, it should work for Potter.
Goblet of Fire marks a stunning return to form after last year's awkward and stilted effort, Prisoner of Azkaban. Goblet is so good that I would say that it very narrowly trumps the seminal flick, HP and the Sorcerer's Stone. In addition, knowing what I know about the upcoming movies' storylines, I can't wait to see how they handle the final books of the series transition onto the silver screen.
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" is rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images and is now playing in box offices nationwide.
Oh, so now The Prisoner of Azkaban is "awkward and stilted"? Last year you were talking about how it was the greatest thing since books were invented, how "It feels like the magical world of the books that the first two never did", and now it's "awkward and stilted"? Geez, tough crowd.
I will say this: the movie suffered from a 'Serious' lack of Gary Oldman (man, that was worthy of Schwarzenegger). Hopefully the next movie will feature more of him. ;)
C'mon man, a movie review needs to be more than just a plot summary and "I liked it!" What about the performances? How Brenden Gleeson never seems to go over the top, despite playing a very over the top character. How Miranda Richardson plays Rita Skeeter as the annoyingly oblivious, would-be-perfect-for-Gilderoy Lockheart intrusive reporter she is. Or what about the scene where the girls from Beauxbatons and the boys from Durmstrang are introduced? How that scene is a little demonstration of the stereotypical expectations of each sex? (Christina noticed that too)
I agree that the movie did leave a lot of stuff out, but it's understandable. If it didn't, we'd still be watching it. At least in this one there's a reason for the Dursley's not even being there. In every movie since the first one they feel like they've been almost forgotten. And I agree, the part about the wand's was a neat touch that they should have left in, but the typical public probably wouldn't care about that.
One thing I wanted to bring up is how annoying Moaning Myrtel (spellign?!?) is in these movies. I would they rather have come up with some other way to explain her actions in the movie. She's just a bad character all over.
All in all a pretty decent review.
Doom Gaze says
I don't remember what I said about Azkaban. It was last year, and apparently, everyone except me has a stenographic memory. Regardless of what I said then, looking back, it was the weakest chapter in the movie series so far. From what I remember of it, the movie varied in quality from scene to scene. Some scenes were rushed and ham-fisted, others nailed the the subject matter on the head.
This could be attributed to the director, Alfonso Cuarón, whose previous credits include artsy-fartsy, meandering drama movies like "Y tu mamá también" and "Great Expectations." The man obviously had no idea how to advance a complex plot within a given timeframe. A perfect example of this inadequacey is near the end of Azkaban during the scene when Sirius explains his innocence to Harry and Pettigrew's identity is revealed. So much dialogue is belted out in two minutes that it even threw me for a loop, and I had read the book twice.
I did forget to include some mention of the performances, but perhaps its an indication of the pacing of the movie. The movie moved so breathlessly from scene to amazing scene that I didn't really have time to notice the performances except for those that stood out.
Overall, just about everyone on the cast turned in a stellar performance. Both Dan Radcliffe and Emma Watson turn in great performances for the blossoming child stars that they are. Rupert Grint isn't really given much to do in this movie except get pissed off at Harry. I also noticed that Michael Gambon, whom I was pretty sure could fill the seat of the next Dumbledore, has slacked off in his performance this go round.
To me, Dumbledore was portrayed in the books as being a gentle old wizard who's always willing to listen with a stern wand at the ready for smiting evil. Richard Harris did a fantastic job of portraying Dumbledore as the kind hearted Wizard/Headmaster. Gambon seems to take on the role as more of an authoritative Principal (Think Snyder, but much less annoying and certainly less bald). The polar opposite of Harris' performance, Gambon's Dumbledore seems hard-hearted and indifferent. His performance completely fails to project the image of a man that would choose to password his office after his favorite candies. This a major blemish on the movie that should have gotten mentioned in the review.
Moaning Myrtel is annoying for a reason - she's supposed to be! She's the single reason nobody ever uses that bathroom. 'Nuff said.
Speaking of annoying characters, Rita Skeeter didn't really have a lot of screen time anyways, which is a good thing since she's an annoyance to both the audience and the characters. In this respect, she did give a good, transparently shallow performance that certainly deserves mentioning.
I disagree with you on Moody. I think Gleeson's Moody needed to be more over the top than he was portrayed as in the movie. It disappointing to me that I never got to hear him scream "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" even once during the entire movie.
wydren says
I only remember what you said because it was so different from my opinion. I thought the movie was wildly uneven, which you just stated. Some scenes were dead on and some made me say "WTF?" I think they handled such things as the dememtors as well as they could (for a public with Nazgul fresh in their minds), but the scene in the shrieking shack was just clunky exposition that proves the old storytelling adage "Show, don't tell".
I would agree that it was Alfonso Cuarón's inexperience with this type of movie that led to this, but for Mike Newell's resume. Before "The Goblet of Fire", I think the closest thing to this he directed was "Four weddings and a funeral", which, though action-packed, wasn't as character driven as Harry Potter. :)
I think Moaning Myrtel is a character written for children that needs to be abandoned as the series grows up. It's already bad enough that the characters have serious discussions using words like "muggle".
Dumbledore is an interesting character in the movies. We now have two very different Dumbledores with two movies each, and I'm honestly not sure which one I prefer. I definately think his scenes in books 5 & 6 are more Michael Gambon than Richard Harris, but I don't know if that's more Michael Gambon adapting to fit the character, or the character adapting to fit Michael Gambon. It's a moot point though, as they can't go back to Richard Harris.
One scene I wish they would have included at the end was Dumbledore sending everyone on missions to prepare for the coming war (which echoed to me the end of The Two Towers, with Gandalf trying to rally Rohan and Gondor to war with Sauron). That scene sets up the next book perfectly, in particular the rivalry between Sirius and Snape, and a "big" development for Hagrid (forgive the pun). It'll be interesting to see how it's dealt with in the next movie, or if those threads will simply be excised in the interest of time.