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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
(November 2005)

Another year, another Harry Potter Movie. The forth movie is the Harry Potter series is helmed by Mike Newell this time around. He has the dubious honor of trying to translate the longest and most action packed book of the series thus far onto the big screen. So how did he do?

If you have never read a single harry Potter book you will mostly likely be generally entertained by the fast paced movie. There are a few things that will leave you scratching your head, but they are not confusing enough to spoil the movie for you. The action is fast, the CGI is the bet of the movies so far so sit back grab your popcorn and enjoy.

For everyone who has read the books this movie comes up short in my opinion. Watching it I could just image the screen writer looking at a checklist of important plot points from the book and then writing a few filler lines in between each to come up with the script for the movie. Oh boy was the movie rushed. But believe it or not that is not my biggest problem with the movie. My biggest complaint are the character portrayals.

To save time they seem to have dialed all the character personalities to the extreme. Moody is now demented and insane, Barty Crouch Jr is a tongue flicking sociopath, Voldemort was a skulking dracula and Dumbledore is an unsteady, emotional, wreck. The Dumbledore in the books may have not always known what was going on but he was never rash he would never have grabbed and shook Harry and the movie Dumbledore did. Would it of killed them to tone done things a little and let the characters be more human?

Although the effects in this movie are the best of the bunch so far they seem to have used up all their effects money for the first half of the movie. The first task now is very dramatic with Harry flying all over Hogwarts in an attempt to out run the Horntail and retrieve the golden egg. By the third task the budget only allowed Harry to face off against angry hedges in the maze. Skrewts, Sphinx, bogart/dementors and giant spiders just didn't fit in the budget. Neither, apparently, did red snake like contacts for Voldemort.

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images.