ryan kennedy’s blog

Lisa and I caught the midnight show of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night while we were in New York. Ever since I read the book, I have believed that this would be one of the best Harry Potter movies of the series. Why? The tournament.

The Tri-Wizard tournament is being held at Hogwarts this year. One student is picked from every school (two new wizarding schools are introduced) to compete for the Tri-Wizard Cup. One thing leads to another and Harry ends up in the tournament where he must face three very dangerous challenges. These challenges are the reason I thought Goblet of Fire would make a great movie. Set aside quiddich, these were going to make some fantastic action sequences.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie. I’m left wanting more after much of the book content was cut. It feels like I’m reading the book at double speed and whole chapters are being dropped. I know they had to do something to keep it from being a 5 hour movie…but honestly, I would have sat through it.

It’s also a little dismaying that as a result of the abbreviated storyline that many characters aren’t seen much and some new characters in the book don’t show up at all. Snape and Malfoy are given cameo roles, which is too bad. No time is spent developing story lines in any of the classes. It’s all tournament, all the time, which is fine for the movie. The way I see it, the movie is a visual extra for people who have read the book. If you care at all about the story, you will have read the books. If you haven’t read the books, you probably don’t care about the story and won’t mind what bits and pieces have been cut. At least the director chose to keep the movie focused on the tournament to prevent the movie from being a bunch of fragmented, unfinished stories.

As for my action sequences, they were okay. The first challenge was by far the best and the most exciting. The second was adequate. The third and final challenge left me totally numb. There was almost a sense of wondering why they even bothered adding it. That’s the one part I really wish they had spent an extra 10 minutes developing.

But the final challenge is quickly forgiven since it’s really just the vehicle to get you to the payoff…the return of Voldemort to power. Ralph Fiennes has me salivating for Order of the Phoenix to come out. It’s another great story and the continuing development of the Harry/Voldemort relationship should be awesome to see on the big screen.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2005 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.