Movie Reviews

The Harry Potter films continue to get better and better with each instalment (The Goblet of Fire is the fourth), but I think they're still far from being 'great' movies.

As much as I enjoyed the books, too, there was one complaint I had about the first four of them: they took too much time introducing, re-introducing, explaining, and re-explaining things that had already been touched upon in previous instalments. The fifth book (my favourite so far, though not having read the sixth) avoided this, and jumped right into the action. The filmed version of The Goblet of Fire accelerates this process by one instalment and skips right past anything to do with the Dursleys or any kind of unnecessary exposition, getting the kids right into Hogwarts (well, after a quick stop along the way to the Quidditch World Cup, which thankfully involves very minimal amounts of actual Quidditch-playing).

Most of the film revolves around the 'Tri-Wizard Tournament,' a wizarding competition in which Harry competes as (one of) the representatives of Hogwarts, against the brightest and most talented students of two other wizarding schools. While the tournament provides for some good action and drama, it also means that not a whole lot of time is given to the 'real' story at play inside the Harry Potter universe: that of the evil Lord Voldemort's return to power and Harry's attempts to stop him. This stuff is given some very good and significant screen-time near the end of the film (including one of the first truly emotional moments I've seen in any of the Potter films), but it feels tacked on and disconnected from what precedes it (which also happened to be another problem I had with the novel).

This is not to say that the film (or book, for that matter) is bad; far from it, actually, but I'm still waiting for a Harry Potter movie to truly impress me. I do, however, have high hopes for the next instalment, The Order of the Phoenix.