Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

Harry Potter with His Giblets on Fire

Like all the Harry Potter films this is excellent.

I always look forward to enjoying a good 2 hours of magic.

great to see Miss Jones from 'Rising Damp' on the screen again too!

Wizards and Stuff!

The fourth adaptation of the inexplicably popular HP books has triumphed to become the best yet in the series, but then is it all that surprising when you are dealing with supposedly the best book in the series too? Goblet of Fire was the mountainous behemoth of a tome that the self-indulgent JK force fed the shepherded masses, and of course there was an awful lot of stuff -stuff being the operative word - to be shoehorned into a feature film for kids. You can tell this straight away from the opening of the film, which breaks from usual tradition and doesn’t offer us the usual going’s on in Harry’s muggle lifestyle; and of course you know that there’s going to be a lot from the book that just hasn’t made it onto the screen. (Thank God)

The Quidditch World Cup is thrust upon us with no explanation and we are introduced to the Death Eaters who are much lauded as the evil nasties of the piece, but who in reality do naff all in the actual storyline of the film. We are expected to believe that the TriWizard Tournament is a regular occurrence in magic-land even though there’s been no hint of it at all in previous outings, but it is this which serves to hold us in our seat for nearly the next three hours. This is merely a problem I have with JK’s ability to introduce new concepts to a (very) tired and long drawn formula (keep thinking about the Benjamins, Ms. Rowling) and doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on the film production.

However, as a book that was over seven hundred pages long, (Who among you wonders about how many 8-10 year old children actually read all of this?) we get remarkably little character development. We are too busy being sidetracked by this fantastically made-up tournament and the goings on that encourages HP to beat every other wizard’s ass at being good at magic and to show off just what a special boy he is. Apart from that - and here’s the killer - NOTHING’S GOING ON.

Okay, so we do find out at the end (spoiler alert for those kiddiewinks who just love HP but haven’t actually read the books - that’ll be about 75% then) that it’s all been a big ruse just to get HP to the right place where he can be strapped down while big bad you know who makes his first proper appearance; but it’s all very convoluted and a bit of a hoodwink to slap that on at the end as some kind of explanation for us wading through so much stuff.

As you might imagine the fun is in the getting there, and here the film delivers on almost every aspect. The action is gripping, the effects are exceptional and the vast array of British acting talent -including Ralph Fiennes as a wonderfully charismatic evil mastermind - is second to none. Mike Newell does a grand job of guiding us through the all important set-pieces (JK can’t write a book without them) and the succinctness of Steve Kloves’ screenplay is almost spot-on.

There are moments where you wonder what on earth is going on between the characters, such as at the ball with Hermione and Ron and Harry and Viktor and Fleur and Cho, because so much has had to be ripped from the text, but you can fairly easily fill in most of the blanks yourself. (Maybe JK might be advised to apply this strategy to her writing style)

All in all, as a kid’s action film that weighs in at nearly three hours long, Goblet of Fire does deliver with bags of entertainment. I’m sure the kids will be kept hooked and the action barely lets up long enough for them to be bored at the fact they’re sitting in one place for so long. As a technical achievement and as drive for the British film industry GoF is great, it shows just what we are capable of if we’ve got all the money in the world behind us. (Or 1% of JK’s gross profits) This has succeeded in exactly what it set out to do, bringing a wonderfully active film to a young audience. Good job.