Talk about "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth film in the Harry Potter series. This film is where the series begins to make its transition from children's movies to targeting an older audience. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire received a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America for "Sequences of Fantasy Violence and Frightening Images."
In this film, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), and his friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) continue attending school at Hogwarts, but find that this year their school is hosting a Tri-Wizard Tournament. This tournament brings in students from the two other wizarding schools in
Europe to compete for the Tri-Wizard Cup. Though the contestants are supposed to be older than seventeen years of age, at fourteen, Harry Potter mysteriously finds himself obligated to compete. Harry's goal is to stay alive long enough to accomplish the tasks of the tournament, but the tournament might not be the only thing posing a threat to Harry's safety.
Review
I can't imagine how the movie makers could have set out with the goal of cramming a 700 page book into a three hour movie, and according to the IMDB, Goblet of Fire was originally going to be cut into two separate films, to be released a number of months apart. This idea was obviously vetoed, and though the film isn't nearly as thorough as it would have been if the two-part one was made, it still got the story across by cutting out many of the sub-plots.
On that note, most of the sub-plots from the book were deleted from this film. This is basically an outline of all the vitally important events that take place in the book, without any of the stuff in-between. In some cases, this plot thinning is a good thing, as it cuts down on the amount of time that Ron and Harry spend fighting and sulking, but in many cases, it is a disappointment to see that a particularly humorous scene or character has been cut altogether to accommodate time.
The first thing I was incredibly disappointed with was the representation of the Quidditch World Cup. Obviously it is not a crucial plot point, so that's probably why it was cut like it was, but one scene of the players entering the field, and no scenes of the actual game, was not enough.
As far as the cast goes, I found myself disappointed with some of the choices. Though the actress was the same in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I was greatly let down with Moaning Myrtle (Shirley Henderson) in this film. I didn't realize that she was a forty-year-old woman in the earlier film, when in-fact Myrtle is supposed to be twelve or thirteen years old.
Somewhat going hand in hand with my disappointment at the Quidditch World Cup, I was sad to see that veelas (beautiful creatures said to bewitch men with their charm) aren't mentioned at all in this film (and neither are leprechauns or Ludo Bagman). The actress chosen to play Fleur (Clémence Poésy) was pretty, but she wasn't the most radiantly beautiful girl ever; Fleur was supposed to be radiant because she was part veela.
I was however, very satisfied with the choice of Predrag Bjelac to play Igor Karkaroff, because he was just as greasy and crooked-seeming as I imagined.
Every once in a while, we, the audience would get a view from behind the magical eye of Mad Eye Moody, and I was also disappointed with this. His eye was supposed to be magical and not electronic. Fortunately, these views did not occur often, and when they did occur they were very brief.
Despite all the places mentioned where this film fell short of the book, there were some places where it exceeded expectations. Ron's dress robes were exactly as they should have been. I was also very satisfied with the portrayal of Lord Voldemort by Ralph Fiennes.
One interesting point was that many of the young male characters grew their hair out for this film. Harry and Ron, and especially Fred and George Weasley (James and Oliver Phelps), had significantly longer hair. Harry had much longer, messier, and more unkempt hair in this film, which is what he was supposed to have had throughout the series, and that was a good thing.
Conclusion
I would say that this is the best out of all four of the Harry Potter films that have been made so far, but as always, the films cannot hold a candle to the books. It is impossible to cram 700 pages of creativity into a two-and-a-half hour movie. The DVD for this one may be worth buying, because I'm sure that it will have lots of scenes that were filmed but couldn't be included in the final cut. Of course this film cannot compare to the book it was based off of, but as a film it wasn't bad. Personally, I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter books, but the movies have always been mediocre in comparison. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the best Harry Potter film that has been made, but it is by no means an amazing film. Most of my complaints are where the film fell short of the book (and of my imagination) and I understand that it's impossible to please everyone and satisfy their imaginations.
