Better than others, but too cut down

Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2005)

While "Goblet" has some fantastic moments, to be certain, those moments feel compacted together where they shouldn't be. Anyone who has read the book will know what I mean when I say that the movie was a bare-bones coverage of the book's events. A lot of the characters we could as book readers grow to either love or hate are all but glossed over or given short details in which director Mike Newell seems to rely upon prior knowledge of them from reading J.K. Rowling's series for us to understand them. Daily Prophet journalist Rita Skeeter (though well-portrayed by actress Miranda Richardson) is one such case of sad underusage, as are the other Triwizard competitors (Robert Pattinson's Cedric Diggory, Clémence Poésy's Fleur Delacour, and Stanislav Ianevski's nonetheless fantastically brooding Viktor Krum), while characters such as Bertha Jorkins, Ludo Bagman, and Winky the house-elf, pivotal to the events of the book, are entirely absent.
While it is quite understandable that some events that occurred in the over 700-page novel would have needed trimming, lest "Goblet of Fire" run ten hours long, it feels like all but the very bare-bones of the plot - the dangerous Triwizard Tournament and the disastrous Yule Ball - were completely stripped away, leaving the movie seeming as though it lacks a real driving plot. The more major events of the book are thrown out in quick succession with almost no explanatory backstory motivating them, where Newell again relies on familiarity with Rowling's book series.
There are some bright glimmers in the fabric, though. The battle between Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and the Hungarian Horntail, while completely deviant from the book, was done in a way that had the entire audience of the movie theater I was attending on the edges of their fold-up seats, the infamous "second challenge" with the grindylows and merpeople underwater was excellently executed without too much reliance upon CGI monsters, and the climactic confrontation between the evil Lord Voldemort (a deliciously evil Ralph Fiennes) and Harry, with Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew (Timothy Spall), Lucius Malfoy (the as-always appropriately greasy Jason Isaacs), and the rest of the evil Ku Klux Klansmen-esquire Death Eaters looking on was sharp and emotional in the wake of Diggory's murder and well-made out of a particularly confusing scene in the book.
Radcliffe, portraying Harry, has clearly improved from his previous appearances. Emma Watson, portraying his friend Hermione, is still rather wooden in a lot of scenes but does have her moments. Rupert Grint, who plays Harry's other friend, Ron Weasley, is still the best of the leading trio, capturing the essence of Ron admirably. Brendan Gleeson as Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody was surprisingly good, far outclassing my dismal predictions of how he would come off from the previews I'd seen, while Predrag Bjelac made a fine appearance as the sinister Igor Karkaroff.
Unfortunately, some other things about the movie rubbed me the wrong way. The people behind this film seemed to be trying a little too hard to romantically connect Harry and Hermione and downplay the sexual tension in the book between Hermione and Ron conversely, though this might have just been my imagination. Cedric Diggory was portrayed as an arrogant jerk rather than the noble, self-downplaying young man of Rowling's book, which served to make his eventual death much less impacting (save for in the case of the a few sobbing young ladies in the audience, which I can't really seem to find a way to explain personally). Very little of Harry's ordinary school life, dodging strict professors and exchanging heated volleys with melodramatic Divination teacher Professor Trelawney (completely absent from the film, unfortunately) and visiting the wizarding village of Hogsmeade, was shown. The third challenge of the hedge maze was sadly dumbed-down, but with so much that challenged our hero in the book version absent (most noticeably Hagrid's vicious Blast-Ended Skrewts, which I sorely missed for some inexplicable reason) it hardly had any alternative to being a strange magical version of "The Fog", but inside a giant maze. And perhaps most importantly, the usual emphasis on the magic of the Harry Potter world was, by and large, completely absent.
"Goblet" was more dark and gritty than typically charming, which is appropriate for its subject matter, but it feels still somehow unfinished, and as if it showed us snapshots of the fourth year at Hogwarts and somehow tried to make them indicative of the only events that occurred. For overall good acting and a lessened reliance on spectacle, as well as its daring in breaking the old formula, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" earns a 7/10 for me and a recommendation to go see it. Just make sure you've read the book already, and don't be expecting everything.
And yes, I did get shivery goosebumps every time the name "Voldemort" was mentioned in this film. You may consider me impressed with the movie's portrayal of the villains, certainly.