Harry Potter 4 stinks.

Rating: 5/10 (20 November 2005)

I saw this movie on its second day running, and I must say that there wasn't much laughing or oohing or ahhing anywhere in the theater except for a section near the front where everyone was dressed in black cloaks and carrying broomsticks.
This movie was a stinker. About half way through my wife turned to me and asked how long it had been showing (now, I'm 25 and she's 23, so when I say that we're married and didn't like the movie, don't assume that we're a could of geezers who wouldn't get it anyway). I checked, and it had been going for an hour and twenty minutes; then the damning question jumped into my mind: what's the point? The way the story was unfolding, it didn't look like we were in for the intriguing mysteries that had made the first three films in the series. This was just a typical high school teeny-bopper story, except the characters all happened to be witches and wizards.
The real story to the Harry Potter series is supposed to be about how Harry continues to learn about his past and his relationship to Lord Voldemort; it's a detective story with magic. I think that what went wrong with this movie is that the director lost his focus. This wasn't a detective movie with magic; it was a high school movie with magic. To put it another way: you could take the stories from the other Potter movies and adapt them to a "real life" movie about a boy solving a mystery, without any of the fantasy elements, and they could still be interesting movies. If you take the magic out of this one, all you have is Fear Factor mixed with your stereotypical junior high drama. I say give Mike Newell the ax and bring back Alfonso Cuaron!