Harry Potter Review: Goblet of Fire

Brief:

In the fourth instalment of the Harry Potter series our view of the Wizarding world is expanded to show Witches and Wizards from other countries. We first see them in the Quidditch World Cup and then in the Triwizard Tournament, which has come to Hogwarts.

Interestingly enough, the book doesn't begin with Harry at the Dursleys house (though it gets there eventually). It shows us a scene of great significance to the future of the Wizarding world, and for the first time in the series we know a little bit more than Harry does.

The book centers around magical sport and competition and I must admit that I am not a huge sports fan. This may be the reason why I didn't it find it as satisfying as some of the other books in the series. It was still great, but I didn't feel as much of a desire to find out what happens, and I didn't feel as much motivation from Harry's side, as I usually do when he's out to solve a mystery or foil a dark plot. This is not to say that it lacks awesomeness. In fact, there are many excellent details in the book from funny moments to heart-wrenching ones.

The movie was a good adaptation of the book. There were some changes made, and this time I didn't feel as confident that these decisions were the best ones, but it remained a faithful enough adaptation overall. However, for the first time in the HP films, people who haven't read the book will find themselves confused. If you haven't already, I would highly recommend reading the book before you see this movie. Even if you've already seen the movie you will find reading the book very illuminating.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Movie regrets:

I had a few grievances with this movie. For the first time I felt like they were changing things from the original storyline for no good reason and I was upset with some of the omissions from the movie.

We did not get to see the Dursleys at all, which was disappointing since their interaction with the Weasleys was highly amusing. Also, since Fred and George's inventions become more and more prominent in the next three books you'd think they would have kept them in this movie.

The Quidditch in the Quidditch world cup was also absent. We saw the build-up to the game, the death eater havoc, the players zooming onto the pitch, and the aftermath of the game, but we didn't get to see the game itself. As I said before, I'm not the biggest sports fan, but this was one scene they should have included!

House elves were also absent from this movie. Dobby continues to be a key character in the rest of the books so taking them out was stupid. They ended up having to re-inset him into random scenes he shouldn't have been in later on which was very stupid. Also, taking out the House-Elf Liberation front robbed the stories of one of the more mature and thoughtful aspects. Finally, Winky was crucial to the plot, and to the final confession making sense so taking her out of this movie contributed to the confusion of the plotline.

This is also the movie when the magic began to disappear. We only see about two minutes of a Hogwarts class through the whole movie and the only magic that we see is magic that is directly related to the central storyline. Other than that the students might as well be at any random Muggle school. The invisibility cloak is gone and the background-magic, the excellent world-building mood-setting magic that existed in the previous movie is conspicuously absent.

Michael Gambon yells at Harry and slams him against a wall. Whoever cast him as Dumbledore after the first actor's death made a huge mistake. Dumbledore is constantly described as calm throughout the series and Gambon's acting is anything but calm.

Other minor annoyances:

-         Moody's eye looks like an eye-patch, very different from the way it is described in the books. It should have been like the eye that one of the pirates has in Pirates of the Caribbean, the one that keeps falling out during battle scenes.

-         Hermione wears pink instead of periwinkle blue. This is totally pointless and doesn't fit with Hermione's characterization.

-         The Beauxbatons entrance dance/whatever that was.

-         Harry doesn't even attempt to prepare for the maze, and they don't have to face anything in there except the plants and some weird mist, where are all the obstacles?

Movie Bonuses:

Crouch Junior was amazing. The actor did a great job of characterizing him and bringing out the insanity and cruelty of his character.

Even though I didn't like the fact that they took out Dobby, I couldn't help loving the scene where Neville gives Harry the Gillyweed and thinks he's killed him. This is because the Neville actor did an awesome job with it, and because I like for Neville to be more prominent in the movies since he is so important in the books!

Rita Skeeter was also portrayed quite well.

World-Building rating:

The book scores quite high on the world building scale. A little lower than Great. It was rich in detail and added some excellent things to the world of Harry Potter. My grievances with it were mostly plot-related; the world-building was quite strong.

As for the movie, it would score somewhere close to decent. It portrayed the main plotline faithfully enough, but stripped the world of its magical details!