Darker Spells and Meaner Adversaries for Harry and Company's Fourth Year

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2018)

Tournament time for Harry, Ron and Hermione, as their beloved Hogwart's Academy plays host to a high-stakes wizarding competition and an influx of students from two international schools. It also represents childhood's end, in a way, as mortal stakes are raised and the trio begin to take an interest in members of the opposite sex.
The series has grown considerably darker this time around, and in more than just a thematic sense. All around the school, formerly bustling with life, the colors feel drained and lights extinguished. It's a chilly, drab-looking film, apart from a few splashy moments during the action scenes, lacking the bits of good-natured whimsy that had typified the franchise to this point. Many, many threads from the novel are completely omitted, which makes sense as it's a seven-hundred page tome and would not have easily fit into a feature-length window, but those remaining points lack a sense of cohesion. Rather than speckled segments of a greater whole, they play like mix-and-match dashes of half-told sidetracks; a shifting, unfocused narrative that nearly serves as a jumbo-sized montage.
The broader saga takes some important steps this time around, with Voldemort finally making an in-the-flesh appearance and Harry working his way through some particularly sticky situations. We add a few important supporting players, too, although that seems to come at the expense of the core trio. Ron and Hermione are relegated to second (or third) fiddles, and the film sorely misses that sense of camaraderie as their mutual society approaches an existential crisis.
A tricky episode to rate, one which could have been excellent with a bit more focus and room to breathe, but also may have been nearly unwatchable at the proper length. We're finally moving somewhere consequential, at any rate.