Okay, so I watched the most recent Harry Potter movie.

I was underwhelmed.

I mean, it was alright. There were plenty of good things about it. Most of those things were things that were good about the previous movies. Not much really NEW that was good about this one. I think that was part of my problem. The previous movie was exciting because it was such a different style and tone than the first two movies. This one was pretty much more of the style and tone of the first movie. That's fine, but it didn't bring anything new to the table.

The timing in the movie was all jacked up.

Here's the thing: These film makers need to decide if they're going to stay "true" to the books or not.

In an effort to pack 750 pages of novel into two and a half hours of movie, while trying to still carbon copy the content, you end up with this chaotic hodgepodge of crap that doesn't really fit together.

I’m no zealot about staying true to the book. I really don’t care. I read the book, and it was an entertaining book, but I don’t feel like the movie should have to try and duplicate the book. In fact, I’d rather it didn’t. I already read the book. I don’t need to see the exact same thing over again.

BUT, if you’re going to try and carbon copy the book onto the screen, then you seriously need to shit or get off the pot. Either do it or don’t.

The studio wanted to cut the movie in half and release two movies a few weeks apart. They didn’t think the movie could be consolidated into two and a half hours. Mike Newell said that he could make it work in one movie.

I agree with the studio on this one. I think it would have been MUCH better as a five hour, two part movie.

In trying to cram the movie into two and half hours, everything feels rushed and there’s no time at all to get invested in, well… anything. I didn’t care about anyone in the movie. I didn’t care what happened. It was like having your hand tied to the back of someone’s bike and running behind them, trying to keep up. It just isn’t really fun or entertaining.

There was no sense of time in this movie. They go to the-

Btw, if you haven’t seen it and don’t want it spoiled, you should probably stop reading


 

 

 

here.


Anyway, so they go to the world cup, get attacked by death eaters and end up at Hogwarts, they find out about the Triwizard Tournament, they find out who’s going to be in the tournament, they participate in the tournament, find out Voldormort is back, bury Cedric and then it’s the end of the year, time to go home for the summer. It was like they covered a couple weeks worth of events and then called it a year.

There’s an idea that when you’re writing a screenplay, you’re supposed to cut it down to the completely bare essentials. There shouldn’t be a single wasted word. No scene or dialog that doesn’t progress the story in some way or another.

This movie took that idea too far. Rather than having a lean mean fighting machine, this movie was a skeleton that simply didn’t have the strength or support to stand, and it fell apart. There was no back story. There was no explaining who anyone was or why they did what they did. There was no sense of history or purpose. I feel sorry for anyone who came into this movie without having seen the previous movies. The books always made a point to be, at least somewhat, individual novels. You didn’t necessarily have to have read the previous books to pick up a Harry Potter novel and get into it. It would help, but JK Rowling does a pretty decent job of catching you up. The movie up till this one did the same thing. You could probably go into one of the first three movies cold and be able to figure out what was going on and enjoy it.

Not this one. If you’d never seen the previous movies or read any of you’d be totally screwed trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.

I personally think it’s more of an insult to the books to try and rush through everything and make a confusing and chaotic movie than it is to simply change a few things to make the movie actually fit into the time frame you need.

What’s even worse is that the director had the opportunity to make the movie long enough accommodate the huge story and he turned it down.

Cutting the movie into two movies would have been the smarter move all around. For the studio AND for the fans of the books. It’s better for the audience because it gives the story time to run it’s course at it’s own pace and, in the end, make a lot more sense. It’s better for the studio because, well, that’s twice the box office draw. Twice the dvd sales. Twice the soundtrack sales. Pretty much everything that makes money for a movie would be doubled.

That gives you that much more budget. More budget means more room to work on making your movie better.

And this movie could have used it.

That brings me to another problem I had with the movie.

There was something seriously lacking in the special effect department on this thing.

I mean, sure, there were some really neat things in there. The dragons were great. The mermaid things were great. A lot of stuff turned out really well.

But a lot of it didn’t. There were quite a few times where the computer effects just seemed very… half assed.

For instance: In the very beginning, when that caretaker dude is looking out the window up at Voldormort’s house, he steps back and we see a breadbox sitting on his counter.

What I couldn’t believe is that the word “bread” was so OBVIOUSLY pasted on in post production. I don’t get it. Like, okay, so you wanted the bread box to say “BREAD” on it in big white letters. For some reason that’s important to you. Important enough to pay Industrial Light and Magic (ilm.com) to digitally put it on there.

But at least make sure it looks good! That was some of the fakest shit I’ve seen in a movie in YEARS. It looked like someone did it with MS Paint.

There was another scene where Ron was unwrapping a package from his mom, and there was something totally off about the way the wrapping paper was moving under his hand. They’d obviously felt the need to dick with the paper, but it ended up just looking weird and pulling me directly out of the movie.

There were a few other times where the computer effects were just off or downright bad. There were a few times when I noticed that the characters were moving just slightly too fast, in a totally mundane scene. Like there was one of Harry and Hermione walking somewhere, and the speed was JUST off enough to make it look wrong.

I know that last part’s an editing issue, but my point is that there didn’t seem to be a lot of care put into post production. It’s like they half assed it.

And one small, little nitpick thing is this: While I think Brendan Gleason is a total pimp, and I thought he did fine with the roll, I honestly didn’t picture Mad Eye Moody anything like he was in the movie. I pictured him as more of a Clint Eastwood kind of guy. But that’s just me.

So to wrap up, I felt that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was extremely rushed with no sense of pacing and no sense of history and no depth. It was like watching a summery of a movie rather than the movie itself. They tried to pack too much information into too short a film and the movie suffered because of it.

The whole movie felt rushed and halfassed and I think it was the weakest of the bunch so far.

Luckily, the next movie (Order of the Phoenix) has a new director (unfortunately it’s not Alfonso Cuarón, who directed Prisoner of Azkaban) and has a chance to pick up the slack of this film.

Oh, and one last thing… ya know, Lord Voldormort would have been much scarier if he didn’t look so goddamned silly with no nose. I mean, Ralph Fiennes was a fine choice to play him… but the whole time he was on screen, all I could do was look at his ridiculous looking absence of nose. Bad form, bad form.