Vormancian's Full Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” is a film that is at once better and worse than our first two trips with the adolescent wunderkind, and it left me longing for the deft hand of Alfonso Cuaron. Mike Newell is a director who can put together solidly-crafted films, but he is also a director who can slap more or less meaningless scripts onto celluloid with a final result that is generally more. More meaningless that is. His 1992 double whammy of “Into the West” and “Enchanted April” wove magic from new kinds of cloth, and “Donnie Brasco” was without question an effort to slide to the top of your resume. “Four Weddings and a Funeral” is really only memorable due to his guidance. On the other hand, “Pushing Tin” and “Mona Lisa Smile” are only two examples of his frequent misfires, wherein he almost lazily splashes his disinterest onto the screen. “Goblet of Fire” falls somewhere between his best and worst efforts, but the result is less than remarkable.
“Goblet of Fire” finds our three favorite wizards-in-training back at Hogwart’s where a special tournament sets the stage for the introduction of wizards from far off and mysterious parts of the world… like France. Our boy Potter soon finds himself saddled with the perilous task of participating in said tournament. This, of course, much to everyone’s chagrin. I won’t bore you with the details as you already know them intimately, or couldn’t care less.
The bottom line here is that at this point in the series we are solidly established in the situation. On the plus side, “Goblet of Fire” understands this reasonably well. It moves us along at a pretty good clip, without forcing us to stare overlong at every magical whatsit the FX department thinks it can manage. A passing glance at that which is bright and shiny is all I really need. I’d rather have a few more moments watching an already overburdened teen bumble his way through asking a girl out. That’s a good deal more of what the story is about anyway. Unfortunately, “Goblet of Fire” throws the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t want to be shown every floating candle as though my mouth were supposed to fall open (like in the first movie), but I do want some kind of entrance into a world where magic exists (like in the third). There were certainly magical things happening in “Goblet of Fire”, but the slightly misplayed rush of the film turned it all rather gimmicky. The dragon here paled somehow when my mind set it next to the Griffin of the previous film. More flash perhaps, but somehow far less real. That is the true defect of this film really. For all that it is ultimately not that bad, it doesn’t quite understand magic. There is a scene in the previous film when Harry stands near the pendulum of a giant clock, and despite the fact that nothing actually magical happens, there is more delivery of a sense of magic in that scene than anywhere in “Goblet of Fire.”
That we are solidly established in the Harry Potter franchise is perhaps how and why things go wrong. At least, it is the impression one can easily get from the film. It smacks of a film that says, “Look, we all know why we’re here, I don’t have to make an attempt at engaging you.” It plays out as a film that knows you know that the dragon isn’t going to kill Harry, and worse yet, knows you know it knows you know. As a result, the film really has no ability to affect its audience. The dragon is boring, the magic is meaningless, and the movie ends with perhaps cinema’s all-time least effective climax. Lord Voldemort, billed to us for three consecutive films as the bad guy to end all bad guys, comes across as nothing beyond a sad and trivial bully. As he turned, ranting and raving, to confront Harry, and his goons, the Death Eaters, melted into the background, I couldn’t help but picture them muttering under their breath, “Errr… easy on the picking on the little kid there Master of the Universe.” It was a scene gone silly precisely because the movie could not really hold our interest. Even the hand sacrifice was a yawn after nearly two hours of the film pushing us away from it as best it could.
Allowing for even the most diehard fans, “Goblet of Fire” is at best a mediocre effort. It serves its purpose insofar as it gives fans an excuse to spend a bit more money, and it is at least fairly enjoyable when we make broad, sweeping “for what it is” reservations; but it doesn’t reach the standard set forth by Cuaron. Cuaron, who turned down directing this film in order to complete the last, put out a film that stood on its own. A film that delivered, hang on now, as a film, and not merely as one more vehicle of a branding juggernaut.
In fairness to Mike Newell, and a host of unfortunately rapidly aging child actors, the film is an entertaining enough little jaunt so long as you expect little from it. There are magical tidbits, and Harry delivers the odd moment of character interest. It is certainly a more valuable attempt than Columbus’ forgettable second installment, but not by much.
When Harry Potter s name emerges from the Goblet of Fire, he becomes a competitor in a grueling battle for glory among three wizarding schools - the T...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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