Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (12A)
Posted by Guest Writer on Wed, 15 Apr 2009.
Starring: Eric Sykes, Timothy Spall, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson
Based on the book written by J.K.Rowling, Harry is back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the fourth year with his friends (Grint, Watson and Coltrane) along with some new faces, including Harry’s new crush, Cho Chang (Leung)!
This time around, it is marked by the Quidditch World Cup as well as the Triwizard Tournament; in which student representatives from three different European wizarding schools take part in a number of challenging contests. As Dumbledore (Gambon) states, “this year Hogwarts will play host to a legendary event – The Triwizard Tournament. Eternal glory awaits the student who wins the tournament.” This questions the friendship between Ron (Grint) and Harry (Radcliffe).
On the other hand, the Dark Lord’s Death Eaters are getting stronger and producing the Dark Mark to show that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is ready to rise again.
The competitors are selected at random, which this year makes a very surprising announcement: - Hogwarts will have two representatives in the tournament, because it is a “Harry Potter book,” it includes Harry Potter in the tournament!
Can Harry cope with the Triwizard Tournament as well as the rebirth of Voldemort (Fiennes) and asking a girl out to the school ball?!
This is Newell’s first time as a Harry Potter director and definitely has his work cut out. It was originally going to be Alfonso Cuaron after directing the darker “Prisoner of Azkaban,” however pushed Newell into doing it instead.
This book is bigger than the first three so turning this into the actual movie was quite difficult. After watching it, you can tell that a lot of scenes have been cut out. Perhaps the director did this to save the uncut scenes for the DVD, but I feel that even saving them to the DVD will not be enough. I mean, look at the size of the book!
Newell does really well in keeping the CGI effects in the film. For example, the Quidditch World Cup looked absolutely amazing with its huge stadium and flashing lights. However, the thing that let it down was the fact that the match was not even shown. It was just introduced by the players coming onto the field, and then the scene cut to the Weasley family cheering because their team had won.
Because it is Harry Potter book, surprisingly something is bound to happen to Harry. This is emphasised too much and Harry tends to just stand there at times in the film. For example, when Harry takes part in the Triwizard Tournament, they only show Harry competing in all of the challenges. Surely, if the director has introduced new characters, Viktor Krum (Ianevski), Fleur Delacour (Poésy) and Cedric Diggory (Pattison) into the film, should he not show them taking part too?
This leads on nicely to Cedric Diggory’s character. I felt that, as he was another competitor from Hogwarts, his character should have been brought to life a bit more, as a result this did not happen. For example, he has very little to say and do, the death of his character was a climax point, but even this still made his character seem empty. He died too quickly then was forgotten about just as fast.
In addition, Newell has used some great British talent, for example, Voldemort could not have been superbly played by Fiennes, the director made a good choice in using him to play the part. To tell you the truth, I was scared of him!
Verdict?
Harry Potter is amazing! Personally I felt that it could have been longer but I think we can forgive the director in making the right choice by keeping it short, otherwise it may have been as long as each of the Lord of the Rings movies. Although, I wouldn’t mind sitting in the cinema for three hours!
Arguably, it is the better one compared to the other three
By Pari
