Harry Potter Month - Mini Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

So, we’ve made it to the fourth film, the first one to get a 12 (the UK equivalent of a PG-13 rating) in the UK. Why the change now? Partly it’s because of much darker content that more-or-less begins with this movie. Partly, and I’m only theorising here, is the introduction of a law in the UK that changed the 12 rating in cinemas to 12A, allowing children under the age of 12 to see such movies, providing they’re accompanied by an adult.

But that’s politics, we also have our third new director, Mike Newell after the director of the third movie Alfonso Cuarón denied stepping up for another movie. The movie was given a $150m budget and its performance was an improvement over the third, $896.9m earned in the box office. Critics enjoyed the movie, 88% rotten tomatoes rating and 81 on metacritic, for all that matters, it’s time to give my view.

Alfonso’s direction style was a considerable departure from the previous instalments, in both style and tone. There are few such departures in this one, with the general aesthetic from Alfonso’s movie remaining despite the continuity hiccups, in tone there are fewer comic relief moments, and this highlights the darker tone this movie is heading towards

Given the premise of the book this was inevitable. Hogwarts is the host of the triwizard tournament, a series of tasks which will hand eternal glory to the victor. When Harry mysteriously becomes the fourth contestant in the tournament, he must struggle through the trials of the tasks, whilst the question lingers of how and why he was chosen.

My first problem, and this is a problem with the book as well, is everyone who thinks he somehow put his name into the goblet, despite the age line that rejected ageing potions and the like. Sure he could’ve been chosen if that was the case but a lot of people seem to ignore the mystery that he was chosen as a 4^th contestant. Putting the name into the goblet wouldn’t have been enough, he would’ve had to confound the goblet into believing he was representing a fourth school or something. Thankfully we don’t go too far into the devolution of the relationship between Harry and Ron, which was not a well-received by fans (or at least not by me)

The movie maintains its focus on our trio, who are more than capable of performing at this point (although haircuts might be in order for some of them) perhaps a little too much as other side characters such as Neville, Seamus, Dean, Parvarti and Ginny amongst others are shunned to the side (well, Neville gets a moment, but...) Even the relationship between Hagrid and Madame Maxime is cast to the side a bit. Partially I think this comes down to the fact that this is where the books shoot up in length, which means more had to be cut out to get a half-way decent run time (it’s still 2 and a half hours long guys)

In new character realm we have Alistor Moody (Brendan Gleeson), Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson – aka Edward from Twilight – insert your own Twilight jokes here guys, I really don’t care enough about Twilight), Lord Voldemort’s new noseless white body (Ralf Fiennes), Rita Skeeter (Miranda Richardson) and Barty Crouch Jr played by the enormous teeth of future Doctor David Tennnant. All perform admirably in their roles

We skip any scenes with the Dursley’s (they’re not in the 6^th or 8^th films and glanced over in the 7^th) as we begin straight at the Quidditch world cup, it’s a bit of pity we don’t see much of the match, as we really don’t see Quidditch in this movie at all.

But overall it’s an intriguing movie and a great start to what is to become a great epic tale.

Rating 80/100 

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Images used in this review are from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use