Brandon's Pop Culture Site

Over the weekend I bought and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. From this point on BEWARE SPOILERS.

I have very mixed feelings about this movie. It was very fun to watch and over the top in a very good way. The special effects were amazing and pure eye candy. The cast, for the most part, was a stellar as always. New additions Ralph Fiennes and Brendan Gleason are of particular note. Much like anything done from a novel you have read, you enjoy getting to see what you have only pictured in your mind. And there is nothing quite like when they get something just as you have imagined through your minds eye, and there were quite a few of these occurences.

I am not going to blast the movie too hard. Probably not even as hard as it deserves. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is not only my favorite Harry Potter book, it is one of my favorite books period. It broke my heart to see how the story was picked over and torn apart. Every side story that made the book the crown jewel of the Harry Potter collection were missing here. The story of Rita Skeeter (who only had two speaking apperances in the movie), the story of Ludo Bagman(who wasn't even in the movie) and how he welched on a bet with Fred and George, and most disheartening of all no Dobby, Winky, or S.P.E.W. There was also only the briefest signs of Sirius Black who was the most main character missing from the story. I know that the book was very long and there was no way to get everything in the movie, but also given the time they put into changing the story so it would work without the house elves it seems they could have put them in the movie without actually adding any time. At two hours and thirty-nine minutes the movie is not short by any definition, and it is such a fast paced story that the time flies. Another hour would have gotten it right though, and that could have at least been part of the DVD release. The movie was so fast paced that it seemed to forget to explain things properly, I have read the book and could understand what was happening, but I can not imagine how someone who has not read the book could follow the movie, in fact I had to stop it twice and explain to my wife and stepdaughter what was going on. That is not just a bad adaptation, it is bad storytelling. I have one last bone to pick with this movie here. Up until this movie I have thought the cast for Harry Potter possibly the best book-to-movie cast ever. Until now everyone had looked like J.K. Rowling had described them, but they decided this time to fix what they believe in their minds to be her mistakes(I guess that is what they did). Mad-Eye Moody's magical eye is not a patch, it is an eye in the socket. Viktor Krum is tall, lanky, and when not on his broom clumsy, Harry describes him as "Duckfooted", in the movie we were treated to an undersized, muscular, graceful, cool, stud. Cedric Diggory is very athletic looking and has a friendly face, I guess it would be a judgement call on the face, but the movie Cedric was thin and wiry. Madam Maxine is in fact a foot or so taller than Hagrid in the book, but she is also as big around as Hagrid is, in the movie she was very, very thin. I applaud them on Rita Skeeter and Barty Crouch though, they were up to the high standards set in the previous Potter movie installments.

I realize most of this is a little nitpicky, but I am not judging them against any standard they hadn't previously set in the earlier movies and like I said there is a part of me that liked the movie. It was fun, but just as much fun as it is to see something when they get it right, it is equally as distressing to see something when they get it wrong. I am worried about and looking forward to the next film in equal measures. But there is no denying I am looking forward to the next book a million times more.