Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Review

$101 million opening weekend (the second highest of the year and fourth all time). What’s this box office slump people keep talking about again? Ok, so these are business concerns and that’s not what this blog’s about. How’s the actual movie? Pretty freaking fantastic if I do say so myself. As with most of the movies I’ve reviewed for this site, I am a fan of the material and find it impossible to review in a vacuum, so I feel obligated to state that right up front. However Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is one film that I feel will be enjoyed by the most die-hard of Potterphiles as well as people who frequently confuse Harry Potter with Frodo.

Based on the above financial figure and the Bookscan numbers on the Harry Potter series, there probably are not many people left who don’t know the story, but I always like to cover my bases, and I hate spoiling things, so if you want to go in fresh, stop reading now. GoF has quite possibly the darkest opening of any family film I’ve ever seen which reflects the PG-13 rating (a first for the series). I wouldn’t worry about kids being too scared to watch it though. I read another review that called it “the good kind of scary”, and that feels like the perfect description. Tim Burton likes to say that children have a better idea of what they can and can’t handle than adults do, and I think he has a good point. I often wonder how long I am going to have to wait to show my kids some of my favorite movies, but when I think about how old I was when I first saw similar movies, it seems that I will not have that long of a wait. Speaking of things coming a little earlier than I expected, the first use of the words “Avada Kedavra”, a very important phrase in the HP series first pops up before the audience knows its significance, a fact that I hadn’t noticed while reading the book. For us fans of the book, hearing these words so early in the movie gives an unexpected moment in a movie that we all thought we knew inside out before seeing. My jaw literally dropped when that phrase was spoken and I can’t wait to hear it come from a few other characters as the series progresses. After this introduction we are thrust back into the world of muggles, mud-bloods, and squibs and can start making direct comparisons to the films that came before. This marks the third director for the series, and many of us were wary that Mike Newell would be able to live up to the standard Alfonso Cuaron set with Prisoner of Azkaban. Consider those fears quickly quelled, as Newell is more than up to the challenge. After the second movie I found myself getting rather bored with the Quidditch scenes in each movie and hoping that they would be trimmed in future installments. With Azkaban, Cuaron managed to make the sport feel fresh and exciting again, but GoF marks the first movie where I wanted more Quidditch. The Quidditch World Cup stadium is simply too damn cool-looking to be used so briefly. That’s a good complaint to have, especially since GoF features the effects team used in the first two films, which I thought looked inferior to Azkaban. It seems that they learned quite a bit since Chamber of Secrets, since every last effect shot looks extraordinary in this movie, a feat even Azkaban fell short of. The visual effects pinnacle of course is the first challenge of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, featuring a particularly nasty dragon. The end of this sequence produced the most bathroom breaks of the movie, as I’m sure a large amount of soda-drinkers found themselves unable to leave their seats no matter how uncomfortable they became. This is a shame though, since the segment in between the first two challenges is probably my favorite piece of the movie. This is where the film morphs into a John Hughes-style 80’s movie complete with a school dance featuring a new wave band (and if you’ve been listening to the radio lately, you know that what was old wave is now new wave again) and teenage girls crying in the hallways. It’s here that we really get to see the young actors show how far they’ve come. Each has their own little moments of both humor and angst (especially Ron Weasley played to perfection by Rupert Grint) as the sexual tension that had been relegated to metaphors up until now, begins to come to the forefront in some hilarious and unexpected ways. This all serves to help us appreciate how blessed the production has been to be able to keep such a large cast together for so long. I can’t imagine getting the same feeling when Hermione laments being Ron’s “back-up plan” if I wasn’t watching Emma Watson cry over Rupert Grint. I remember being amazed at how perfectly cast the original Harry Potter was. To have a cast that dead-on for four (and fingers crossed, seven) films where you can literally watch characters grow up over the course of an epic is something truly special. The next two challenges are similarly strong, although I wish that they could have sustained the tension between the second and third challenges a little better. As it stands, the third challenge just sort of jumps up on you without much build-up. It is here that the film (and the series) takes a dark turn and we are formally introduced to the Darth Vader to Harry’s Luke Skywalker. Interestingly enough Ralph Fiennes is easily recognizable under the Voldemort make-up while at the same time looking exactly how we’ve always pictured “He-who-must-not-be-named”. Fiennes does a good job with Voldemort’s menace, but is saddled with one aspect of the Harry Potter series that’s always bugged me a little. You see, J.K. Rowling can be a little long-winded with her exposition at times, and while characters explaining what just happened or what is going to happen reads alright in a book (except in Azkaban where it seems to go on for chapters and chapters), it tends to bring a movie to a screeching halt (again Azkaban being the exception, where this problem was handled relatively well). This is by no means a deal-breaker, but it’s something that’s popped up a few times in the series, and usually slows the film down right in the middle of the climax. Another thing I’d like to see in future installments is a way to make the wand duels a little more exciting. It works ok here, but there are quite a few of them in the next two books, and I hope they involve more than just standing and pointing. Following this, we have the film’s denouement which demonstrates that this series can effectively handle real human emotion, which is quite encouraging, considering what the next two books bring with them. We are also given the best line of dialogue of the series, and one of my favorite film quotes of the decade, when Dumbledore tells Harry “Dark and difficult times lie ahead, Harry. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy”. Now THAT is compelling writing for a 5 year old or a 50 year old, and to anyone still holding a snobbish attitude toward this series, well I just feel sorry for you. Let the killjoys complain about how movies aren’t any good anymore, while the rest of us sit back and enjoy an era where film has advanced to the point where any story the mind can conceive can now be put to screen.