Should have been two movies

Rating: 7/10 (18 November 2005)

Why couldn't they have pulled a Peter Jackson, and released this as two movies? There's easily enough plot in Goblet for four or five hours of film, and Mike Newell's skill with a cutting knife was nowhere near as good as Alfonso Cuaron's in Azkaban. This movie suffered from the same flaws as Chris Columbus's treatments of the Potterverse, where getting as many elements of the novel on screen as possible was more important than letting them flow smoothly or giving the plot(s) time to unfold. As a result, we got to see many things for a few seconds each, without really getting to know them (Did Fleur have any depth in this movie? Did Krum have anywhere near enough? How could they not explain the "Prior Incantatem" magic, save mentioning the words?....). There were lots of good moments in Goblet, but they didn't add up to as much as I'd been anticipating. I hope the director of Phoenix gets the pacing better.
--Note: I saw this on an Omnimax screen, and that impacted how easy it was to watch the entire screen at once. But the points I'm making are about plot, not how easy it was to see everything.