A couple of months into the fall/winter movie season and we already have ourselves a winner: The fourth addition to the Harry Potter series of movies, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Three directors in and it appears to me that the last two actually understand what it means to adapt an enormous book to screen. Sacrificing what is necessary for cohesion and brevity, both the Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire have done an overly decent job of boiling down the soul of the books, the plots, and the characters into something more promising than the jarring word-for-word translations of Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. It's not a knock against the original director, but perhaps it should be.
Continuing the maturity set forth in the third film, Mike Newell directs a strong focus on adolescence. There's anger, there's fear, and there's even the beginnings of young love. We're introduced to a few new characters, some positively spell-binding special-effects, and plot density aplenty. Compressed down from 600 pages, Goblet of Fire cannot afford to mince words when it comes to the story, nor can it stand the excess sub-plots lined within the book. As lean as it appears, it still comes in at two and a half hours. Maybe overlong for some, I was satisfied with the length. Maybe a few seconds could have been trimmed here and there, but who knows what was left on the cutting room floor.
Coming back to the adolescence at hand, it's safe to say that the young actors who we've watched mature before our eyes have started to look quite comfortable in front of the camera. The main three of Dan Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson are making names for themselves in these films based on their strengths. Ron is appropriately flummoxed, Hermione is exceedingly fastidious, and Harry is steadfast as always. Do we sense that they are comfortable in their skins? Yes. Is it sad we do not get to see more of their education unfold? As a service to the plot, no, but it always did serve to get more enveloped into their 'world' in the previous features. They've done a fine bit of acting above what they accomplished in Azkaban. I have full faith they'll carry through in the final three movies.
The look, the feel, and the tone of the movie are also markedly different. One of my friends noted that it was "too dark" but I found it appropriate, given the subject matter. We're experiencing the same menace at times of danger when it's required and it is only slightly simmering under the surface at other times. The music is more moody, more brooding. Almost unnoticed, it's a subtle touch that lends to the weightiness of the subject matter. We're also treated to some of the best special effects amongst the films thus far. Seamlessly, the magic that was an everyday happenstance in Azkaban, a marvelous new wonder in Sorcerer's Stone, and an anvil in Chamber, has become awe-inspiring in its elegance. How far have they come, vision-wise and technology-wise that something new can be brought to the table four movies into the saga.
Complaints? There are few. Having not read the book in a while, there are some subplots that begged reckoning and I even found myself completely forgetting a few twists and turns, but I still regret that they have not clarified the "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs" label on the Marauder's Map (which happens to be inexplicably absent from the film). There's terribly little of inter-class conflict and most of the teachers also get almost the same amount of screen-time. It's all in the name of good storytelling though, as the movie suffers little from the omissions.
I'd say this one is very close to overthrowing Azkaban as my favorite of the four. See it if you haven't, read the book again to refresh your memory, and know that Goblet of Fire is very much worth the wait.
Final Score: 4 out of 5 stars.
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