Watch out, spoilers about. Umm, like the one in the title, actually… Sorry about that, if you’re one of the 2 people who read my blog (possibly – actually, I doubt there’s that many) who haven’t read Harry Potter IV.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Wow. Wow! WOW!
18 months ago I reviewed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. And I loved it. It was a refreshing change from the sugar-y sweet first two films. Well, Goblet of Fire is different again. In a very good way.
Mike Newell, the new director, is probably best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral, and is the first British director to tackle the franchise. And he certainly had a tough book to deal with – over 600 pages long, with an awful lot of teenage angst and very, very dark magic…
And he made a fantastic film. GoF is a lot darker than any of the previous three films (hence its 12A certificate in the UK), with some scenes very, very creepy – if you’ve read the book, you can probably guess where they might be…
Of course, to fit the whole book into a 150 minute film, certain elements have had to be cut out – Hermione’s SPEW campaign (and, in fact, all sign of the house elves), the Dursleys, and even Mrs Weasley (although she is mentioned…).
Between the dark elements and scary challenges, though, are some artfully managed moments of light relief – including a terribly funny scene with Snape in a prep session. The Weasley twins once again provide frequent amusement, and even Mad-Eye Moody has a particular streak of quirkiness…
One thing that did surprise me about this installment is quite how well the kids are acting… no more “hhe was their friend!” rubbish – they are all very convincing. And of course the older types are there to add some class – Maggie Smith gets a lot more to do this time round, pulling it off with her usual aplomb.
The new peeps – Fleur, Cedric, Krum, Cho – all fit in very well, very much as they are in the book. Rita Skeeter (played by Miranda Richardson) is brilliant – but underused (a certain element of her story is left out, leaving the character fairly superfluous – but good light relief nevertheless).
And Ralph Fiennes is Lord Voldemort. Strangely, I never really pictured how Voldemort should look, but I always imagined him speaking with a sort of disembodied echoey voice, almost like Emperor Palpatine in the original Star Wars films. So Fienne’s soft-spoken, subtly creepy representation threw me a bit, but now I can’t picture him any other way.
Naturally, the special effects are, well, special. The Quidditch World Cup is stunning – but we don’t get to see anything like enough of it. The three tasks are very well done – especially the requisite broomstick chase during the dragon task.
Another change for this movie is that John Williams did not write the score. Sure, we hear snatches of Hedwig’s Theme every so often, but Patrick Doyle’s theme seemes to have taken a different direction – to some success. Bizarrely, Jarvis Cocker wrote three songs for the movie (performed at the end of the Yule Ball), including the fantastically titled Do the Hippogriff and the beautiful Magic Works. Given that Harry Potter hasn’t really had songs in before, they work surprisingly well…
Basically, there is very little about Goblet of Fire that I disliked. Certainly some scenes seemed a bit rushed, and I’d rather have seen different elements dropped from or left in the plot. But Newell and co have done a very, very good job of transferring JK Rowling’s vision to the screen, without feeling they had to stick too closely to the book. The 12A (PG-13 in the US) certificate warns you that you’re going to see a very different film to those in the past – and that is what you get. Quite frankly, I was blown away!
As an aside, the Odeon in Newcastle was packing in so many showings (every screening after 4pm was sold out) that we went into the cinema while the credits from the previous showing were still rolling – so you’ll be glad to know that, according to the credits, “No dragons were harmed in the making of this film”.
