Way too much going on - should have been a two-parter?

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2020)

Possibly the weakest of the series, this one, for me. Our trio start by visiting the Quidditch World Cup which is invaded by the evil "Death Eaters" who reduce everything to ashes in their search for "Harry". Shortly afterwards, the "Tri-Wizard Cup" comes to Hogwarts - a good excuse to introduce some new characters amongst them Frances de la Tour as the enormous "Madame Maxime" and Roger Lloyd-Pack as "Barty Crouch" as each school chooses their champion to take part in the potentially lethal games. "Hogwarts" chooses "Cedric Diggory" (Robert Pattinson) but the goblet also chooses our "Harry" and so four go into the competition. As this description, so far, probably indicates - there is an hell of a lot going on here and not surprisingly the adaptation to the screenplay starts to leave out detail and characterisation. To do the story justice, it ought to have been two films - we spend way too long establishing and when we get to the climax, it all seems a bit too rushed. Mike Newell simply has to squeeze too many, important, interweaving themes into 2Â½ hours and it doesn't quite work. It is still a great fantasy adventure building well on the now well-established characters and putting more meat on the bones of the "Harry Potter" character.