Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) Reviews

• See the movie for action, read the book for story

  imdb-109002005-11-22

  It's unfortunate that so much of the book needed to be cut for time and the movie is still nearly 2 1/2 hours long. The rule of movie editing is when you must trim for time you remove the sub-plots. A lot of story and character development isn't there. But what is there is a great visual treat. If the movie leaves you with questions just read the book or get the audio version on CD. It would have taken a minimum of another half hour to flesh the movie out and that simply wasn't going to be done by a studio whose primary target is a younger audience. (Note how no studio wants to release an animated film longer than 90 minutes for this reason.) Perhaps Alphonso Curon would have done a better job of cohesion but there really isn't much more that could have been done in the time and the script would have been essentially the same. This movie begs for an extended Lord of the Rings type DVD, another 30 to 60 minutes to give you what was left out for theatrical release. See it and spend the bucks to see it on the big screen.

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• They got Dumbledore all WRONG!! and lots of other stuff too

  SRArmstrong2005-11-18

  First, the good news -- The special effects and the music in the this movie were the best yet! The underwater scenes especially were very well done. The thing I disliked most about the movie is that Albus Dumbledore is not portrayed as the calm, wise old wizard he is in the books. Instead he is portrayed as a stormy, confused old man that doesn't have much of a clue what's going on. The character of Dumbledore is just WAY off. In one scene Dumbledore grabs Harry around the neck and shakes him, what's THAT about? The very thought of Albus Dumbledore being physically violent with a student is Absolutely ABSURD!! THATS NOT IN DUMBLEDORE'S CHARACTER!! Real Harry Potter fans all over are going to be outraged by this portrayal of Dumbledore. That pretty much ruined the movie for me. Another thing I didn't like about this movie was that so much of the real story was left out and/or changed. I guess i'm just spoiled because I'm so attached to the books... I know it's impossible to fit that whole story in a 2 1/2 hour movie, but there was some pretty good stuff that was left out. If you're interested, Some of the things that weren't included in the movie that stuck out in my mind are: I'm still ticked off about Dumbledore... I'm starting to think that the people who make the movies just don't even read the books, because Dumbledore was SO out of character it made me angry. That bothers me more than anything else. I wouldn't rush to see this movie, wait until it comes out on DVD. Besides the good special effects and music, the movie was really bad. I Hope this review has been helpful.

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• horrible idea to make it one movie and not two

  Lucifer8002005-11-18

  The movie ran as if it were a series of highlight clips from an actual film representation of the fourth harry potter novel. Details were thrown in haphazardly, if for no other reason than to bring a feeling of recognition from readers. If the viewer had not read the book, but only seen the previous two movies, s/he would not have understood the movie. The screenwriters created no semblance complicated plot, but rather the rather single-minded story of the three tasks in the tri-wizard tournament. All new characters were hardly introduced and remained quite one-dimensional, which is unfortunate; even old favorites got the shaft in this one. There was no time for more than two short scenes with either Malfoy, no magical lessons, and Dobby the house elf was completely absent. Crouch never disappeared, but his body was found dead. The cinematics in this case were atrocious: Harry appears in Dumbledore's chambers in the scene immediately after discovering Crouch's body, but then proceeds to tell him about his scar hurting and dreams rather than Crouch's discovery. There was no magical map, no late-night encounters with Moody, no discussion of Snape and Karkaroff's relationship, nor of Dumbledore trusting Snape. Seeing as this relationship will rise to be the single most prominent issue in the entire series, I was very disappointed to find it was ignored in favor of large and ineffective theatrics, such as a hedge maze without any traps, only shifting walls and evil roots, an extremely obnoxious modernized yule ball, and a pointlessly drawn out dragon chase scene. Dumbledore's lines and the directing of his acting made him look like an old, bumbling fool, rather than the clever, most-powerful-wizard on the planet, the only person of whom Voldemort is afraid. The writers decided to add Crouch Jr. into Harry's dreams, completely removed the second house-elf and the invisibility cloak from the quidditch world cup, and had the audacity to explain that Crouch Jr. had been sent to Azkaban, but never explained his escape. Finally, the movie ended with Crouch Jr. being sent back to Azkaban. The Minister of Magic never showed up with dementors to kill Crouch, Dumbledore never argued with him about the verity of Harry's claims, and the potential for an amazing cliff-hanger conclusion with Dumbledore in all his might giving orders to Hagrid and others as a general before the final battle, was instead replaced by a horrible attempt at a eulogy combining direct quotations from the novel with poor scriptwriting to make Dumbledore out to be a poor speaker as well as incompetent wizard. I shudder to think how the next movie will have to deal with all of these plot gaps, and how Dumbledore can hope to maintain any semblance of respectability when he trusts Snape and continues to avoid Harry in the fifth movie. Much better would have been to stick with the original idea and make two movies. This movie didn't feel like it had any plot, one did not become attached to the characters, and spent the movie groaning or laughing at the contrived immaturity of it all. Some acting by Harry and friends was good, but it was overshadowed by a terrible attempt to fit everything and nothing into the movie.

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• A huge, HUGE disappointment...

  TheScraggler2005-11-18

  Before I review the film, let me start off by saying that I am a fan of the Harry Potter films and have liked all of them up to this point. I'm not going to compare the movie to the book because, as most people know, they are two completely different animals. There is no way in heaven, hell or on God's green Earth that a book the size of Goblet of Fire could appropriate EVERYTHING that happened in the novel. I'm going to go by what I saw up on the screen. What I saw up on the screen was a completely pedestrian effort that made no attempt at contributing style, substance, or character development to a series that was getting better and better with each progressive film. Scenes start and stop with no explanation. The big action scenes (especially the fight with the dragon) just begin with no buildup whatsoever almost as if you've stumbled upon someone playing the new Harry Potter video game. There is no sense of the passage of time at all. The Tri-Wizard tournament consists of only three challenges yet the competition seems to last the entire school year. Ron and Hermione have a blow-up at the Yule Ball because of his misplaced jealousy yet six months go by (the last day of school) and NOTHING MORE is ever said about it? She even tells him that he made a mistake by not asking her out and he lets SIX MORE MONTHS go by without saying a word?! I can forgive the fact that a lot of these things are just glossed over because of the time crunch but I can not forgive situation after situation that has something happen only because the lead character needs to live. In the aforementioned fight with the dragon, Harry ends up hanging from a ledge 100 stories above the ground trying to reach his broom which is nearby. The dragon lands on the building and begins crawling down to him, slipping and sliding, peeling away shingles as it goes and it suddenly hit me. Harry is hanging from a ledge, defenseless, and the dragon is CRAWLING toward him. He is dealing with a creature who spits fire and who can FLY. One flap of its wings and a quick belch and Harry is crispy. The ONLY reason it doesn't is because Harry has to live. And for that matter, no one in the film acts or reacts to a situation because it's in their nature to do so. They react in a certain way because that's what the script demands that they do, even if it completely goes against their character and everything that we know about them. When Hermione blows up at Ron, it seems to come out of nowhere. She seems to be mad because Ron didn't ask her and she wanted to go with him. But if this is true, why is she so happy about being there with a competitor from a rival school? And I don't just mean happy, I mean she is absolutely BEAMING when she arrives with him. And at one point, Dumbledore grabs Harry and shakes him violently demanding that he answer a question. My reaction to that was WTF??? Has Dumbledore ever shown that he's a violent person or that he would grab a STUDENT, yelling in his face? Of course not but he does it because the script says he has to. At one point in the film, a particular curse is brought up that allows you to control another being. That's kind of funny because it seems like every character in this film is being controlled by the screenplay, even if it means going completely against character. But I guess the biggest disappointment for me was the confrontation between Harry and Voldemort. For someone who has been built up to be the devil, he sure is beaten easily at the end of this film (and by a quartet of ghosts, no less, which took cheesiness to a new level). The appearance of Voldemort is obviously supposed to be chilling but, in actuality, he looks like a hairless rat wearing a cape. The great Ralph Fiennes does everything he can but part of the appeal of this character is NOT seeing him in closeup in full daylight. He shows up when he wants and manages to let Harry live because he'd rather talk him to death instead of just cutting off his head while Harry is pinned down. But, of course, that's because Harry has to live and this final confrontation, again, seems ridiculous in retrospect. The entire Tri-Wizard tournament seemed a little off-kilter to me. You perform tasks that test your abilities and try to do better than your opponents, but to what end? The final test consists of entering an ever-changing maze and the first competitor to find the trophy wins the tournament. So, even if you finish DEAD LAST in every other challenge, if you're the first to find the trophy, you win anyway. So, I ask you, WHAT'S THE FRIGGIN' POINT OF EVEN COMPETING IN THE OTHER CHALLENGES?????? Why put yourself in harm's way three times when you only HAVE to do it once? Looking back, I just realized that you could completely skip this film and move right on to number five without missing a beat as long as you had someone to tell you two things about the film - Harry's interest in Cho and Voldemort being back, sort of. Here's hoping Order of the Phoenix doesn't follow the same path.

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• Good though rushed

  cosmic_quest2005-11-18

  Based on one of the best books of the Harry Potter series, the film adaptation of 'Harry Potter and the Goblet' had a lot to live up to and I think it succeeded. As Potter fans will know, in GoF, Harry is now fourteen and in his Fourth Year at Hogwarts. When an ancient tournament between Hogwarts and two other European wizarding schools is held that year, a Seventh Year contestant is chosen from each school to compete but things go dramatically awry when Harry, three years too young to even be entered in the dangerous and challenging tournament, is somehow also chosen after his name is mysteriously nominated. GoF is a sharp turning point in the books as the tone darkens considerably and the characters themselves change from being rather wide-eyed innocent children to adolescents thrust the turbulent, uncertain adult world where being 'good' or even an innocent will not guarantee your survival. This shift is also reflected in the film, which was rated 12A (PG13 for Americans), the first of the HP films to be rated so high. I have to say I did enjoy this film, although Prisoner of Azkaban remains my favourite of the four. Unlike the first two films, this did not attempt to condescend as much to small children in the audience. The tasks of the Triwizard tournament captured most of the thrills of the book, particularly the second water-based task where the merpeople were suitably creepy (now we know why none of the kids go swimming in the summer term!), but the first task over-ran for a minute or two more than needed. Light romance was touched upon yet wasn't over-emphasised and the Yule Ball will please those who enjoyed the scenes in the book but audience members over the age of sixteen might find teens ogling each other a tad dull (Hermione is very out-of-character and the scene does drag). The acting of the adult cast is, of course, exemplary as always. Alan Rickman's Snape may only have had four or so scenes but he definitely made his presences known while Maggie Smith really captured the essence of McGonagall. Many people do miss Richard Harris' Dumbledore but I found that Michael Gambon has done an excellent job of moulding the role to make it his own. In GoF, Dumbledore feels very human in the way he carries the weight of the wizarding world on his shoulders and though he struggles at times, his concern for his pupils is paramount. I finally felt the close rapport between Dumbledore and Harry in this film that was missing in the previous three HP flicks. However, the prize has to go to Brendan Gleeson for his scene-stealing depiction of Mad-Eye Moody. Gleeson clearly enjoyed illustrating Moody's dangerous, feral edge. The younger cast have also grown into their roles, improving from their previous outing. Rupert Grint, usually used to playing a comical and stupid Ron, had the chance to cut his acting teeth and show Ron's darker, bitter side and he did well. The Phelp twins have also improved dramatically. No longer do they come across as wooden cut-outs just reading from a cue-card and instead they are able to show the mischievous spontaneity of the Weasley twins. And I look forward to seeing more of Matthew Lewis, who was great at showing Neville's sensitive side without making him too klutzy. Out of the younger cast, though, Dan Radcliffe is the one who has progressed the most. In PoA, he was awful in the 'he was their friend' scene so he seems like another boy in the harrowing graveyard scene and the aftermath, depicting Harry's anger, feelings of vulnerability and grief. He still stumbled on occasion in other scenes but I, at last, have faith he might be able to do the Harry of 'Order of the Phoenix' justice when the time comes. The film did lose points on a few issues. Although most of the young cast have expanded their acting skills as they have gone on, Emma Watson is waning. She has a tendency of over-enunciating her lines and being too melodramatic, which worked in 'The Philosopher's Stone' when Hermione was condescending and childishly bossy, but is just annoying by this point. She spent most of the film sounding as if she was on the verge of tears or in a hormonal snit, even in scenes which were not remotely sad or upsetting. There was also a choppy feel to the film, as if Steve Kloves struggled to properly condense the book into a two-hour film. Those who haven't read the books will have missed quite a bit and those who have read the books will feel the film is very rushed. Molly Weasley and the Dursleys were also missed, especially since I think Julie Walters would have been exceptional in the Molly/Harry interactions that take place aftermath of the graveyard scenes of the novel as the film didn't round off in a manner that reflected a boy had died and Harry would be traumatised by what he saw. I think most Potter fans will enjoy this although they will remark that it could have been better. Non-fans will also get something from this film as I imagine it is hard not to be captivated by the many action and dramatic events but they may find themselves muddled by the story. I would recommend that parents of young children either keep away or, at the very least, check out the film firstly before deciding if their child is old enough to cope with it. When I went to see it, there was a small lad of four or five being dragged along and in the middle of a particularly fearsome incident, the silence of the moment was cut by a wee voice crying, 'Mummy, I'm scared' so, parents, be warned.

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