Needed Work

Rating: 3/10 (10 December 2005)

Being an adult Potter fan, I waited to write this review until I saw the movie a couple of times to get a good feel for it. Why a couple when I gave it such a low rating? Because I was very disappointed with the movie the first time I saw it.
Entertainment Weekly hit the nail on the head when they said the movie felt like individual LEGO bricks dropped into places on the screen. There were many scenes in the movie that could have been dropped with how little time they got, and there was too much humor in this movie and not enough story. First the good points:
1. Relationships are developed - We begin to see the clear lines drawn between friends and enemies.
2. A realistic Dumbledore - There is a reason why Voldemort fears Dumbledore. He's not supposed to be calm and cool all the time. I liked the general concern for Harry and how Michael Gambon portrayed it.
3. The Yule Ball scene - This was the closest scene that was true to the book.
4. Creating Ron - Rupert Grint does a wonderful job with developing his character. He doesn't give the same stupid look all the time anymore. I found his character less annoying in this movie.
5. "He was their friend!" - Dan Radcliffe has definitely improved his emotional acting in this film. He was actually crying this time.
6. Hermione Power - Hermione's entrance into the ball was the best scene in the bunch. She looked so lovely coming down the stairs and the way Harry looked at her made your heart melt. This scene was well directed and I give credit to Newell, but this type of directing is what he needs to stick to.
Now for the not so great stuff:
1. Castle Layout - DON'T have your students coming down the same stairwell for defense against the dark arts that you used in the previous movie for divination. It's just not right.
2. Portkey Problems - If it wasn't for the importance of the portkey, the Quittich World Cup scene, for the amount of time it got, should have been cut.
3. Snape, the Death Eater - Instead of showing us two little bits of Karkaroff to make us believe that he was the one that entered Harry into the Goblet (which didn't fool anyone by the way), the book scene in which Mad-eye Moody and Snape on the stairwell talking about Snape's death eater days would have been more appropriate, as Snape is a large part in future books.
4. Bouncing Ferret - This scene could have been done better with CGI. It was dull and not as exciting as in the book.
5. Dance Lessons - Although funny, this scene was unnecessary and should have been left out for more important subjects.
6. Barty Crouch Jr's dream? - When Harry was having his vision at the beginning of the movie this was the WORST stray from the book that I have ever seen. Barty Crouch was CERTAINLY NOT in the vision in the book. This was a grave mistake.
7. Veela or Nice Body - To make Ron, and everyone around him, stumble over themselves because Fleur has a nice tush just doesn't seem right. It should have been explained that she was half Veela.
This is only a small amount of the major problems that I have seen so far. The most interesting fact that I would like to point out is that we have not heard a single review on what J.K. Rowling thought of the movie. With the other 3, she went to the premiers and gave a review on how she liked them straight away, but there has not been so much as a peep about this one, and she did not attend any of the premiers.
Also, on that subject, I don't think that they had a very good consultant on this movie as they did the others. There was a mistake, that WB had to fix with CGI, with the Riddle gravestone in the cemetery. They had the dates of death wrong. That leads me to believe that they didn't put a lot into research for this movie.
I like this movie in that it is a Potter movie, but they are going to have to make the DVD spectacular for me to buy it.