horrible idea to make it one movie and not two

Rating: 1/10 (18 November 2005)

The movie ran as if it were a series of highlight clips from an actual film representation of the fourth harry potter novel. Details were thrown in haphazardly, if for no other reason than to bring a feeling of recognition from readers. If the viewer had not read the book, but only seen the previous two movies, s/he would not have understood the movie. The screenwriters created no semblance complicated plot, but rather the rather single-minded story of the three tasks in the tri-wizard tournament. All new characters were hardly introduced and remained quite one-dimensional, which is unfortunate; even old favorites got the shaft in this one. There was no time for more than two short scenes with either Malfoy, no magical lessons, and Dobby the house elf was completely absent. Crouch never disappeared, but his body was found dead. The cinematics in this case were atrocious: Harry appears in Dumbledore's chambers in the scene immediately after discovering Crouch's body, but then proceeds to tell him about his scar hurting and dreams rather than Crouch's discovery. There was no magical map, no late-night encounters with Moody, no discussion of Snape and Karkaroff's relationship, nor of Dumbledore trusting Snape. Seeing as this relationship will rise to be the single most prominent issue in the entire series, I was very disappointed to find it was ignored in favor of large and ineffective theatrics, such as a hedge maze without any traps, only shifting walls and evil roots, an extremely obnoxious modernized yule ball, and a pointlessly drawn out dragon chase scene. Dumbledore's lines and the directing of his acting made him look like an old, bumbling fool, rather than the clever, most-powerful-wizard on the planet, the only person of whom Voldemort is afraid. The writers decided to add Crouch Jr. into Harry's dreams, completely removed the second house-elf and the invisibility cloak from the quidditch world cup, and had the audacity to explain that Crouch Jr. had been sent to Azkaban, but never explained his escape. Finally, the movie ended with Crouch Jr. being sent back to Azkaban. The Minister of Magic never showed up with dementors to kill Crouch, Dumbledore never argued with him about the verity of Harry's claims, and the potential for an amazing cliff-hanger conclusion with Dumbledore in all his might giving orders to Hagrid and others as a general before the final battle, was instead replaced by a horrible attempt at a eulogy combining direct quotations from the novel with poor scriptwriting to make Dumbledore out to be a poor speaker as well as incompetent wizard. I shudder to think how the next movie will have to deal with all of these plot gaps, and how Dumbledore can hope to maintain any semblance of respectability when he trusts Snape and continues to avoid Harry in the fifth movie. Much better would have been to stick with the original idea and make two movies. This movie didn't feel like it had any plot, one did not become attached to the characters, and spent the movie groaning or laughing at the contrived immaturity of it all. Some acting by Harry and friends was good, but it was overshadowed by a terrible attempt to fit everything and nothing into the movie.