Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In a glowing Washington Post review of Goblet of Fire, Christy Lemire wrote that the third “Harry Potter” film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, was in the style of German Expressionism. Oddly, she found no such categorical terminology to attach to the film she was supposed to be reviewing, Goblet of Fire.
The reason becomes apparent upon seeing the film: it has no style. From a purely visual or cinematic standpoint, Goblet of Fire is the least interesting of the four films based on the “Harry Potter” series. There is something in this movie for everyone to dislike, from film buffs to Potter fans.
Potter fans will be greatly disappointed in a movie that retains much of the skeletal framework of the novel, but denudes the plot of many beloved details, or else alters details that were germane to the original story. Film buffs will find the movie lacking in any notable beauty or richness; it is stylistically flat, its plot garbled for those who haven’t read the book, and the cutting of the film is as herky jerky as a ride on a county fair Scrambler. Newell, best known as director of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco, was clearly the wrong director for this film.
For Potter fans, the disappointment begins early. The film begins where the book begins, with Voldemort and Wormtail having returned to the Dark Lord’s ancestral home. In the film, however, they are joined by Barty Crouch, Jr., a figure whom we meet only in a flashback (included in the film) and at the end of the novel, despite his importance to the story. After this scene, Newell cuts to Harry and his friends at the Quidditch World Cup, with no explanation of how they got there. That means one of the staples of a Harry Potter book and film has been cut out: Harry’s summer stay with the Dursleys. Also lost: the house elves, as well as the sub-plot involving the elder Barty Crouch’s elf—a sub-plot that is fairly significant in the book.
Newell’s tweaks of Rowling’s plot can be forgiven, if viewed as necessary to keep the film under three hours; but his reduction of a complex plot into a fairly simple action-adventure tale ruins a novel that is so far my favorite of Rowling’s tales. It’s as if Newell made a film from a slide show: he hits all the high points without sufficient explication, as if counting on his audience to be comprised entirely of people who have read the book. The most obvious example of this stylistic flaw is in the beginning. One moment, Harry and his friends are being transported to school aboard the Hogwarts Express; then Newell cuts to Hagrid directing the flying coach of the Beauxbatons academy in for a landing; and then the Durmstrang ship rises from the deep of the Dark Lake. Viewers who haven’t read the book are probably left wondering what is going on, and to find out, they must wait through scenes of breathless Hogwarts students watching the special effects extravaganza from windows at the school. Harry and his friends are among those watching the coach and ship arrive, and one is left wondering how they got there when a moment before they were aboard a train.
Another scene that is confusing occurs when the elder Crouch is discovered dead in the forest. Newell has so completely erased the subplot involving Crouch and his son and their house elf Winky that I’m not sure it would be clear to the uninitiated why Crouch was murdered, despite a scene invented for the movie in which Crouch and Mad Eye Moody meet and Crouch seems to recognize his son in the teacher.
With these quibbles, I am not merely faulting Newell for creating a movie that seems crafted merely for the pleasure of acolytes of the cult of Potter. Rowling’s plot was fine as it was, and I feel Newell would have made a better film had he stuck a little more closely to Rowling’s outline. I cannot imagine a DVD interview with the author and Newell comparable to the one on the DVD for “Prisoner of Azkaban,” with Rowling and Alfonso Cuaron. In that interview, Rowling praised Cuaron for remaining true to her novel, to the point that he inadvertently foreshadowed details to come in future books. Newell is deserving of no such tribute.
Comparison between Cuaron’s film and Newell’s only serves to highlight what a flawed piece of typical Hollywood dreck Newell has created. There is simply nothing distinguishing about “Goblet of Fire.” No artistic touches, such as Cuaron introduced to indicate the change of seasons in “Prisoner of Azkaban.” Not so much as an interesting dissolve mars the boring simplicity of Newell’s film.
In part, the “Harry Potter” series is a film director’s nightmare: a seven-part story, each part directed by someone new and thus each part bearing no consistent stylistic hallmarks. Ultimately, maybe the films are not supposed to be works of art so much as a cinematic realization of readers’ imaginings. Yes, we want to see what it would look like to stand in a window at Hogwarts and watch that flying coach come in for a landing. Yes, we want to feel the chill of death in the graveyard as Voldemort returns to mortal form. But I can’t help but feel that left in the hands of a better director, such as Alfonso Cuaron, we would have felt all these things more deeply.
The next Potter film is slated for release in 2007, just about the time the novel septology comes to an end; thus we will have to wait awhile to see if “Goblet of Fire” is an aberration, or if it was the beauty of “Prisoner of Azkaban” that was the aberration. Somehow, unfortunately, I think the latter might be true. I had hoped that the steady darkening of the sky in the Harry Potter books post-”Azkaban” would lead to more inspired directing, but it may be that was true only in one, isolated case. Whatever happens to the future books in the hands of Hollywood, I wish Rowling could exercise more control over her creation and choose her directors herself. I’d suggest letting Cuaron direct all of the remaining books, and if he feels up to it, I say let him have a go at a remake of “Goblet of Fire,” while he’s at it. That he probably has no desire for such a task is a testament to how problematic it was from the beginning to alchemize the Potter phenomenon from paper into film.
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thankyou for the review. I now feel better about not watching the movie.
I did watch “Walk the Line” yesterday and liked it very much. Although, it wasn’t completely clear how Johnny Cash had resolved to walk the line or wanted to be good rather than hurt everyone in his life with his womanizing and pill-popping. I guess he did go cold-turkey on the pills and made his proposal to Jun Carter that signifies he wasn’t going to mess around any more. And the scene of him performing in the prison and mocking the water quality they had was priceless.
I guess you could say that his whole resolve to be a different sort of artist comes from that turnaround in his life, but they were only able to capture a few aspects of it in the movie.
dlw
Comment by dlw — Monday, 28 November 2005 @ 10:08 am
Walk the Line is on my list of movies I want to see, but it will be a DVD rental, unfortunately. The next film I expect to see in the theatre is “Narnia.”
Comment by Matthew — Monday, 28 November 2005 @ 10:23 am
Yur review has a different tone, a more professional tone than normal. Or maybe that is just my imagination.
Anyway, Dawn and I enjoyed the film a lot. But I suspect that it was not less the film than the film-going experience that we enjoyed. My mom was visiting, so we actually went out on the town together (”like people do”–As Good as It Gets). There are few feelings quite like being liberated from children for a few hours.
I also liked the Cuaron film. The first two films I consider atrocious. How does this fourth film rank next to the first two in your opinion?
Comment by Dawn — Monday, 28 November 2005 @ 5:00 pm
I think it’s a pretty abysmal film, worse than the first two. I’m really surprised you say you enjoyed it. Does your comment mean that usually my tone is unprofessional?
Comment by Matthew — Monday, 28 November 2005 @ 5:03 pm
It was probably a bad film. We were just having a good time out on our own.
Your writing is always good, but for some reason I thought you sounded like you were deliberately adopting a more formal film reviewing tone. More formal than your normally formal tone, if that makes sense
That was a side comment really and nothing to pay attention to.
Comment by Dawn — Monday, 28 November 2005 @ 5:42 pm
It had been so long since I read GOF that it didn’t even occur to me to miss the house elf. And isn’t that the book where Hermione takes up the house elf cause so strongly? I DID miss Harry’s time with the Weasleys, though, as I recall really liking that in the book and wanting to see how it was imagined onscreen. And like Todd, I suspect our enjoyment of the film came largely from getting out to go see it as much if not more than the film itself. I wanted to go see Walk the Line, but Todd convinced me HP would be more cinematic to see in the theater. And I DID think Brendan Gleason was good as Mad-Eye (or would that be as Mad-Eye’s other??).
Comment by Dawn (NOT Todd writing under her name) — Tuesday, 29 November 2005 @ 9:04 am
GOF is my favorite book of the series, and there were so many parts of the book I wanted to see realized on screen which the director left off. I don’t see how the House Elf Rights theme can be reintroduced in later films, considering how Newell just summarily excised it from this one. In “Order of the Phoenix” the issue comes to the fore because of Kreacher’s betrayal of the Order. There is at least a hint that if Sirius and the others had been kinder to the elf, he might not have betrayed them.
Also, I so much wanted to see the scene from the book in which the Weasley’s come to the Dursley’s to collect Harry for the Quidditch Cup. That is such a great scene.
Another part left out: the Weasley twin’s plan to open a joke shop. Harry gives them the start-up money from his triwizard tournament winnings.
It irritates me when directors use the excuse that they are constrained by the time frame of a theatrical release, thus they have to make cuts. We aren’t talking about a Schwarzeneggar summer blockbuster here. This is “Harry Potter.” This is “Lord of the Rings.” These films have a devoted fan base. Why do directors seem to think that the fans won’t sit through a full three-hour film? Or longer? All Newell would have had to do was add another half-hour to the movie, making it a full three hours, and I would have been marginally satisfied.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 29 November 2005 @ 9:32 am
I bet if we started up a petition and presented it to the author that we could get a remake of this movie made, perhaps with better actors…
dlw
Comment by dlw — Tuesday, 29 November 2005 @ 12:57 pm
I wasn’t irritated so much by the actors, although Daniel Radcliffe is pretty bad. I can’t imagine him ever making another movie after Harry Potter Seven is released. Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emily Watson (Hermione) are decent actors. Neville just gets uglier and uglier (fix your teeth, you stereotypical Brit!)…but then, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Neville is supposed to be Harry’s “other half.” As for the teachers and the other actors, they’re all first tier. Brendan Gleeson is a great Mad Eye. Ralph Fiennes is a slimy and thoroughly evil Voldemort.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 29 November 2005 @ 1:02 pm
I will still go see the movie, but this review was helpful. I meant to go opening day or at least weekend, but life got in the way. I’m trying to get a couple of coworkers to go, but might just go by myself.
Maybe the director was just assuming intimate knowledge of the books, since anyone likely to go to the fourth movie is probably rabid about the books.
Comment by Mel B. — Tuesday, 29 November 2005 @ 4:38 pm
If it is any consolation, Rotten Tomatoes indicates that the film has been reviewed favorably more often than not. It has a ranking of 88% positive reviews.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 29 November 2005 @ 4:45 pm
I just got back from seeing the movie. I didn’t hate it. It had shortcomings, yes, but if you take it at face value (as I usually do), it’s a decent movie.
Sure, I missed the Weasleys as well as the feud with Percy. Or more of a stay at the Weasley house. But ah well. What do you expect you can do with a book that is that long? (And I didn’t miss or mind the house elves not being in there either.)
I just remember being irritated by the departure of Azkhaban via director. This one departs more. I missed some of the little extra touches: not so many moving paintings. There’s a hall/staircase that is virtually featureless apart from the cement. I did like the animation of the stained glass as a concession.
I would disagree about the first two being abysmal — they were at least fairly faithful to what you’d expect out of an adaptation of a book.
I do think that without tying down one director, it’s going to continue to be uneven. And maybe this one was more minimal — not so many trappings. I might like that.
Comment by Mel B. — Saturday, 3 December 2005 @ 5:56 pm
I heard, Warner Brothers has announced the release date for the sixth Harry Potter movie.
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” will open in theaters on November 21st, 2008, just in time for the holidays. No director has been attached to the project.
The Half-Blood Prince arrived in bookstores last summer and sold 6.9 million copies on its first day of release.
The upcoming fifth movie of the popular fantasy series, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” is due out on next summer. I just can’t wait it!
Comment by mp3 player — Thursday, 7 September 2006 @ 8:26 am