Good, but flawed

Rating: 7/10 (18 November 2005)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire may be the most truncated 2hr, 45 minute movie ever made. To say that the pace is brisk may well be an understatement. It moves with the ferocity of a tornado, catching you up in its excitement then tossing you to the ground wishing you had better warning. This is purely a movie for fans that have read the book - while others will probably enjoy it, they will probably get lost because of a lack of proper explanations of everything.
That's not to say that it's a bad movie, either. While I was watching the movie I was enjoying every minute of it. I was caught up in the joy of the Harry Potter experience, yet keenly aware that this could have been more with just a few minor changes.
You've probably already read plot details and dissertations on the fidelity of the movie to the experiences of a hormonally-charged adolescent. I'll skip that. As far as a summary of my opinions on parts of the movie: The acting was fair-to-good, cinematography was great, but the writing was bad. There were many top-notch performances in limited screen time from Maggie Smith (Prof. McGonagall), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort), Miranda Richardson (Rita Skeeter), and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid). Harry, Hermione, and Ron hold their own, but are not given great dialog to work with, and I think they tend to overact a touch - nothing to pull anyone out of the movie, but I've seen better from all of them. The source material was quite good (best of the series, IMHO), but the adaptation was lacking at several points. The dialog was average and served little more than to move the story along, which was disappointing, considering that the look of the movie was so great. It's mostly seeped in neutral tones to lend an ominous feel to the film, and thankfully, the special effects are finally used as a supplementary device, rather than the showpiece; you feel like the creators are exploring the world rather than building it, and it helps to more thoroughly envelop the viewer in the story.
This movie needed about a half-hour more of padding. Those that have not read the book will have to work very hard to pick up every little clue and detail about what's going on in order to put together this labyrinthine plot. The Tri-Wizards tournament, a legendary sporting event with mystical significance was explained by a short speech by Dumbledore, a speech that was jam-packed with expository information that, unless the viewer was ready to absorb, could easily be missed and not digested.
Everything in this movie just sort of happens without regard for previous events or future events - this is called a pacing problem. The Tri-Wizards tournament features three events, but all three events are scenes with almost no build, nothing to give them the weight they could have had. There's no sense of the Tri-Wizards tournament having any impact on the participants' lives, which is ironic seeing that the Goblet of Fire is first and foremost about the events surrounding that tournament. Each trial comes suddenly, gets fifteen minutes of screen time, then disappears. The characters go about their business for another while and then all of the sudden the next trial happens, with little warning. I was so stunned by the appearance of the third trial that as the band played and the participants entered the stadium, I doubted whether or not the scene to come was about the tournament. Like I said, there was no build to lend gravitas to the final scene, almost like going on a roller coaster where you're immediately dropped 100 feet and then coast the rest of the way. The climax comes too quickly, which is stunning considering the running time.
The other issue that I had, a more minor one, is that everything in this film happens with minimal regard for the outside world. This is a shame because one of the charms of the book was about how much it fleshed out the Wizarding universe that Harry lived in. I know the movie should be treated on its own terms, but some of these events, detailed in the book, are left hanging. How did this guy escape from Azkaban? What happened to the reporter? Who exactly are these other kids that show up at Hogwarts? Why is the guy that played Krum such a bad actor? In the end, I give the movie a 7, because, as I say, I throughly enjoyed watching it and will probably see it again. This is due more to the source material than it is to the adaptation, though; unlike Prisoner of Azkaban, this movie doesn't really stand on its own, but is more of a visual representation of certain scenes from the book. It's extremely entertaining, but maddening because of how great it COULD have been.