Goblet of Fire The Last Great Harry Film

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2006)

I have now seen each of the Harry Potter films once, and never read the books. I have no desire to ever read the books, and if I ever see the movies again it will only be because some woman makes me (or if I have kids, but presumably they will have new movies by then). I say this as a way to explain my review, because my opinion will be different from a fan of the books.
The best film in the series so far is the third one. And judging the fifth one by the director, I do not think we're going to see any change on that status for a few years. But this is the fourth film (the second worst behind part two) so let us discuss this one.
This is the story of Harry Potter and the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Harry and three other wizards (including a hot French chick and a Bulgarian built like a brick scat-house) must face three dangerous missions. The subplot is that Harry, Ron and Hermione are now entering puberty and adolescence and want to start dating people. Only Harry has no self-confidence and Ron comes off being more scared of women than anything else. Hermione easily finds a date, and the bewitching hour is soon upon us.
The best part of this film was the introduction of Ralph Fiennes, who decided to play the role of Lord Voldemort rather than film "Maid in Manhattan 2: Back in the Bronx". Fiennes is a truly gifted actor, and he will bring some needed talent to the future pictures (with all due respect to the great Alan Rickman). I also enjoyed the special effects -- the creators of this film used them as much as possible without overdoing it. They assisted the plot rather than the plot assisting the effects. Too many films make this mistake, and I am glad this was not one of them.
So why do I rank this the second worst of the first four? Because if I were to chart the climaxes of this film on a chart, it would look like a heart monitor of someone with a normal heartbeat: every so often a brief problem would arise and a quick solution was found. Nothing ever is given time to build up. And the end is worst of all -- rather than taking what should be the key moment to hype up the story, it just fades off into a happy cowboy-in-the-sunset scene. I was left completely unfulfilled and felt like the vast majority of this movie was filler between the third and fifth films, because almost none of the things in this movie will matter for the remainder of the series. But maybe you like to be unfulfilled, maybe you are a movie masochist.
The fifth one comes across as even more of a bridge, though, making this one seem better in hindsight. And the inclusion of Robert Pattinson is sure to please a particular group of people, even if his role is not as major as it should have been (though at this point, who knew).