harry potter 4

Rating: 8/10 (24 November 2005)

In the 4th installment of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, Mike Newell ("Four Weddings and a Funeral") takes over as director for Alfonso Cuarόn. 10 minutes into the movie, at the Quidditch World Cup, it's obvious that Newell is aiming to make the movie scarier than the other three, when we see a group of guys in skeleton masks and hoods walking through camp lighting everything on fire. This is most likely what earned the movie its PG-13 rating.
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) wakes up from a dream of an old man who gets murdered by Wormtail, Voldermort's assistant. Harry wakes up, and he's at Ron Weasly's house. This is one part I don't like, because I enjoy the parts where Harry is at his aunt and uncle's house. Right away, he's at school. In the book, this is about 10 chapters long. As soon as he's at school, the other two schools, Beuxbatons and Durmstrang, arrive. Right after that, we hear about the Tri-wizard tournament, which, in the book, took much longer and was developed better.
Most of the stuff I look forward to in the other movies, such as the House Sorting, and the Dursley's, and the banquet at the beginning of the year, were all left out, because the Tournament takes up most of the movie. One of the most popular characters, Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), is barely in this movie at all. Some characters new to the story are Fleur Delacour (Clemence Poesy), the representative in the tournament from Beuxbatons, Viktor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski) the representative from Durmstrang, and Professor "Mad-Eye" Moody (Brendan Gleeson), a new, extremely paranoid teacher. Also, Katie Leung plays Cho Chang, and Robert Pattinson as Cedric Diggory, the other Hogwarts champion.
There are two problems with basing a movie on a book. One is, people who have the books memorized will be upset that the movie doesn't follow the book exactly. If it had, it would've been about 8 hours long. Already, at 2 hours and 37 minutes, it's much longer than average. The second problem is, if you read the book, then go see the movie, there's no surprise. You know what's going to happen, so you spend the time waiting for the end, and you don't enjoy the movie as much.