Missed Opportunity

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2005)

There was an opportunity for the 4th installment in the Harry Potter franchise to be nothing short of great. But I simply can't agree with those who have given this movie a high review, and here's why: As suggested by others, in order to bring a 700+ page book into a 2-1/2 hour movie, some (or a lot) of story elements would have to be deleted. Normally this isn't an insurmountable problem. However, in 'The Goblet of Fire' story, it is exactly those 'extra' elements that make this story wonderful. If there's one thing anyone who has read most or all of the J.K. Rowling books knows, it's that there are no unnecessary, unimportant, or otherwise 'extra' elements in her stories. That is one of the key reasons the books are cut above everything else. The end result for the movie is that we are left with an extremely jumpy storyline that simply follows the critical path, providing the viewer with only the most basic information to keep the plot moving forward. There is absolutely no in-depth character development whatsoever. The book was FILLED with wonderful character background history, especially the Professor Moody character. The movie barely scratched the surface. In addition, there was little or no continuity between the major scenes, and almost no feel for the passage of time. This was supposed to be an entire school year, but other than the changes in the weather, the audience would never know it. For anyone who's been to Disneyland, the best analogy I can think of is that this movie is like taking a trip to Disneyland, staying only 2 or 3 hours and only going on the 3 biggest rides - then rushing back home to heat up some microwave dinner. Now, absolutely that beats a trip to the dentist. But when you get home and think back to all of the things you missed, will you really be satisfied with the experience? I wouldn't . . . and I wasn't. Look, the bottom line is that these books (starting with Azkaban) needed to be multi-part movies, similar to Kill Bill Vol 1&2 or the last 2 Matrix movies which were actually one movie broken into 2 parts. Azkaban needed to be a 2-part movie and 'Goblet of Fire' needed to be 3-part. What really blows me away is that the studio doesn't recognize this. It couldn't have taken much more (if any) production time to make a 6 or 7 hour 3-part movie. In fact, I wouldn't doubt that the cutting room floor already contains the other two movies. Ticket sales would be just as high for each of the 3 episodes as it would be for the one (as proved by the Matrix), so why not maximize the studio profit and the audience viewing pleasure by giving this movie the full attention to detail it truly deserves?