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SPOILERS I agree with OSC on most of the Goblet of Fire review. But a couple of things he didn't mention bothered me about this film.
-- Mad Eye Moody (Crouch's son) transfigured Draco and tossed him around humiliating him. Would he risk tormenting a fellow Death Eater's son (or was it part of his disguise?)
-- Did anyone feel like the modern music during the dance ruined the fantasy setting of the school? I thought a mini "rave" broke out and I could sense the audience (mind you, in liberal Cali) getting uncomfortable and losing the fantasy feeling.
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quote: And Goblet may deserve some weird kind of award for having created the funniest and sexiest scene with a ghost in a bathtub ever made
I didn't like that scene because I didn't get why a female ghost would be lusting after boys (Cedric and Harry). Maybe I just didn't get it.
-- The innuendo (right word?) of Rita Skeeter. Did she really try to use her looks and seduction in the book to get her way?
At least I wasn't the only one looking straight up from the third row. Of course, on an IMAX screen, I could watch just about anything and like it.
Posts: 27 | Registered: Aug 2005
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-- I'm pretty sure this at least alluded to in the books. At least (without the books in front of me) the Yule Ball features the Weird Sisters, which is the Wizarding equivalent of a hair band. After the first dance Harry hears a "much faster song" that he liked a lot better than the first.
-- Once again, this is in the books, though it was played up a bit in the film, imho. Moaning Myrtle (who was a former student) has had a thing for Harry since book II, and Harry was rather embarrassed to see her there.
-- Okay, this wasn't really in the books, but I don't really recall seeing it in the film, either. I was able to see it as just in character for her
I have mixed feelings about both the movie and the book. GoF was my favorite book for quite a few years, but I read it again recently and didn't like it near so much. As for the movie, it just didn't do anything for me. I just found it kinda disappointing. I kinda hope I'm not getting all jaded over the whole thing. Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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The only real complaint I had was it felt rushed - there was way too much material to pack into 2 1/2 hours.
Posts: 880 | Registered: Nov 2005
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His review is right on with mine: The movie was everything the book could have been if Rowling still had an editor with the power to edit her books
Posts: 92 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote: -- Mad Eye Moody (Crouch's son) transfigured Draco and tossed him around humiliating him. Would he risk tormenting a fellow Death Eater's son (or was it part of his disguise?)
Barty Crouch considers himself the only loyal supporter of Voldemort. He wouldn't be afraid of Lucious Malfoy at all...
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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The movie tried to cram too much in, while somehow at the same time leaving too much out (essentially no classroom time -- this is supposed to be a *school*, right? -- no Snape, no Hagrid, etc.). I can see tossing the Dobby/Winky and SPEW stuff, but why keep Rita Skeeter if you're not going to follow through with Hermione's hate mail, Rita's animagus status, etc.?
The film jumped around too much (the most abrupt jump being at the start of the third task "Huh, are we at the maze already?"). There were too many things left unexplained. I will grant that the book has far too much material to fit in a movie, so the choppiness is somewhat understandable -- UNLIKE the Prisoner of Azkaban movie, which just plain sucked, IMO.
BTW, the movie made even more obvious a minor flaw in the books -- the pointlessness of the 'spectators' for the Triwizard tasks. At least in the first one, the action vs. the dragons is supposed to take place in a stadium, but there's nothing for the crowds to 'see' in either the second or third tasks.
Posts: 326 | Registered: Aug 2005
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My biggest peeves: Fleur's essential uselessness in the tasks (coulda used a few minutes of the dragon swooping to put in Harry hearing how the others did first, in the book and provides more tension for him) and the ending. The ending of the book left me with a "Holy..." feeling. This was war. War between Dumbledore and Voldemort, between Dumbledore and the Ministry, between Voldemort and an unsuspecting wizard world... I was blown away and put the book down dying to read the next one. The movie did not leave me with that feeling and jumping into it in the next movie is going to be that much tougher.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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mad eye, or more accurately barty crouch, doesn't like the malfoy's much, he felt in the novel that they should have found their master lord voldemort. they weren't imprisoned, so they should have continued trying to advance the dark order. it vaguely has voldy telling this in the movie, and in the book at the end where madeye/crouch are talking to harry, crouch explains it all in much more detail
Posts: 21 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I don't understand how everyone can so easily accept the jarring ride that the moviegoer is taken on in the first section of the film. OSC passes is of as an "if there's any flaw in this movie" and other people have mentioned that the pacing seems a bit rushed, but I found that it severely kept me from engaging with the movie. Not because of pacing--pacing wasn't the problem, per se--but because the transitions were so abrupt.
Okay, it's really just one transition that really bothers me--going straight from the Hogwarts Express to the arrival of the Beauxbatons carriage. It would have taken so little: drop a few hints that something exciting would be happening at Hogwarts this year, maybe Dumbledore's welcoming speech mentioning that they would be host to two other schools. As it was, I felt like I'd missed some chunk of story--I wasn't prepared for what I was seeing, but it seemed like the students knew what was going on. So I was distracted through the next few scenes trying to put everything together.
What I really missed was the atmosphere of Hogwarts. I won't deny that it permeated the rest of the movie, but I think just a minute or two of reacquainting us with the magical setting that we've loved in the last three movies would have done wonders. In fact, it would have powerfully enhanced one of the themes--to enjoy the old and familiar at the start would only make more evident what Hermione voices at the end: "Everything will change now."
Posts: 47 | Registered: Mar 2005
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And how can we start at the Quidditch World Cup and not see even ONE second of Quidditch in the entire movie?
Posts: 326 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Quidditch is expensive to film and, in this installment, fairly unimportant. The riots after the World Cup are the only reason there was a World Cup at all.
Posts: 152 | Registered: Apr 2005
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The loss of the parting of ways I felt hurt the film.
That having been said, I think OSC gets a bit wrong in regards to Columbus. Yes, his interpretations were too "by the book" and often uninspired. But, OSC has a good line in SoTG "if you're going to give him the blame, you've got to give him the credit for what grows from it" Columbus is responsible for the casting of all the actors, including inspired casting of Snape and others.
I found Dumbledore to be too menacing within the current interpretations, and not as well mounted as he was in the books. In the first two movies, Dumbledore was presented as too powerful and a silent mover, Deux Ex Machina, you never felt the kids were in danger because by goodness, Dumbledore was there to fix it. The books didn't present it that way, but the way it was acted and presented did.
Here, he's just too menacing.
That having been said, I don't think the film was better then the book. I felt GoF had a lot of backstory and filler that was very important in showing change occuring amongst the protagonist and his companions. That's part of what I felt was missing in the movie... while the movie is fast paced and exciting, it loses some of the narrative impact by diminishing the change within the protagonist.
While things like SPEW etc. were not really designed in a filmable way, those moments showed growth and transition of characters, which becomes important in the way a reader relates to the character.
The Harry in this movie has no tangible backstory to provide him any more then a shallow depth to evaluate why he does what he does.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie, and thought it was one of the better adaptations I've seen in a while, but it is not "better then the book"
HP, like a lot of OSC's works, presents itself best in an audiobook type format. I've read them, I've listened to them. While I savor reading them first, hearing them spoken aloud by a good reader (or in OSC's case, readers) provides the best way to evaluate a book. I often think of audiobooks as the inner monologue of writers as they put it to paper. And good ones make it feel that way.
This is a good movie that at moments really sores. But don't expect it to equal the book.
Posts: 202 | Registered: Aug 2005
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At least I wasn't the only one looking straight up from the third row. Of course, on an IMAX screen, I could watch just about anything and like it.
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