Short and to the point. (the comment, not the movie)

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2005)

I'm not going to blather on like so many other reviews seem to, I'll try to keep this short.
Goblet of Fire was a good movie that could have been great. Too many people forget that movies are not books. It's my opinion that Prizoner of Azkaban is the best Potter movie, simply because they stripped the book down to the essence of the story. When things needed to be changed to make the movie better, they did.
I'm all for boiling things down to their core, changing necessary bits around a little if it helps the adaptation be a better movie. Something Alfonso Cuarón did a superb job of when making HP III. However, in IV it seemed as if they went back to cramming in everything they could into the script, despite leaving out half of the book (including the character driving parts of the story). This cut and paste effect was reminiscent of movies I and II, but even more so, as book IV is longer than books I and II combined.
As for the one major thing they did change from book to movie, it not only didn't help, but in my opinion hurt the plot, pacing and, I feel, made things fizzle out by the end, though part of that is J.K. Rowling's fault in the chronology of the original story. That plus an unsatisfactory denouement force me to give it a six out of ten.