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Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire..Reviews (1 Viewer)

Zack Gibbs

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I'm not a huge potter fan by any means (I can't stand reading the books, not because of the content, but for Rowling's writing style). But I know and enjoy it enough to know that this is one large progressive story, with each new entry building and elaborating on the last. You're not going to get it if you start in the middle.
 

Jonathan T.

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well thats just is zack, rowlings writing, i think was coming through in this movie, and its just not very good. the overall story is a good one, and one I could see myself getting into. But the exectution of the story is sub-par. It very much seems like the sort of story one makes up as they go along. as if rowling had only a very, very vague idea of what would happen in the story, and makes up one rather contrived "event" for the characters after another. It probably works ok in the books, but this "episodic" style of writing would probably fit better with a tv series than a movie, honestly.

im certainly aware that coming in in the middle isnt doing me any favours, but i was dragged out by freinds to this one. I will say it again, i enjoyed it enough that I want to see/read more of harry potter, but i fail to understand why harry potter is such a phenomenon, when it is, in my opinion, an only competently written story, certainly nothing amazing. Certainly nothing on the level of the narnia books, for instance.
 

Paul Sandhu

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I was wondering if this is worth watching even if you know nothing of the previous movies and the books?
 

Ricardo C

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I don't think it's fair to judge the quality of the novels by a screenplay written by a third party. Imagine if people assumed Peter Jackson's LOTR was enough to judge Tolkien's works by ;) (which is not a slam on Jackson, whose LOTR I love dearly.)
 

Brenda M

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Jonathan T., please don't judge the books by these movies. The movies just give the outline of the basic plot. You don't get the background, set-ups, wonderful descriptions, development and all the extra stuff.

My sister and I are caregivers for my bedridden mother. I got each of the books on CD from the library to listen to while we care for her in her room. And frequently we would be caught by surprise at a funny turn of a phrase and laugh, even though we read all the books. Jim Dale does an excellent job reading the unabridged books and gives each charactor a distinct voice.

The movies are a pale copy of the book. POA was the best. This last, perhaps because of the wrong "happy" ending was the worst for me. Even though parts were very good.

Read the first book of the series. Many people have been hooked, my sister and I included (and we are 50 and 71!).
 

Chuck Mayer

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I am a fan of the movies...they are solid adaptations. But the books are so much more. The bigger fanbase is the book fanbase, not the movie fanbase.
 

Jason Roer

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Jonathon,

As stated before it is simply ridiculous to judge Rowling's writing based on what you see in a movie she had nothing to do with. Cloves had the daunting task of hacking up a 732 page novel into a 140 page screenplay (and if you've ever read a screenplay, 140 screenplay page might equal 100 or so novel pages) The "episodic" feeling you're getting is because the filmmakers decided not to make a film of the appropriate length for the source material. They moved very quickly from one moment to the next with only a couple moments of breathing room. I saw the film last night and thought they actually did a fantastic job with this particular length, but still felt it could have been 3 hours long with an additional 45-60 minutes on the DVD (ala Lord of the RIngs). You have said yourself you've never read a book in the series. Harry Potter is a phenomenon because of Rowling's magical writing craft. She finds a way to make it feel as though she's in the room telling you a story. She really is gifted and I'm usually not one to gush over another writer. And what impresses most is that as the series developed, she got better. So give her a chance before dismissing her abilites as a storyteller.

Cheers,

Jason
 

mattCR

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Was not present. Other elemnts were cut very short, and the ending was not quite in line with the book. Other things clipped by very fast.

Don't take this as a bash of the movie; it's incredibly difficult to take such a long book and turn it into a film.. earlier, they almost divided this book into 2 films, which could have been made to work, as there is a clear dividing point within the book (IMHO).

But as it is, the Movie is solid entertainment; and the book stands completely on it's own. As someone who loved the book, I can accept the movie as a different kind of medium.

BTW, I will be interested to see how this goes, as some of the elements excised from the book in this film come back in an important way in the next book..
 

Chris Atkins

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Wanted to see this one last night, but it was sold out. Should see it sometime in the next week or so. Appreciate Chuck's review which will enhance my viewing. PoA was simply perfect so I will not expect PoA part II.
 

todd s

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Can anyone answer my questions?:

1-Was Cedric Diggory ever mentioned in the first 3 books? He almost seemed like the Oliver Wood character from the other movies.

2-When Harry gets back from the graveyard at the end. He doesn't seem to mention that Lucius Malfory along with Crabbe & Goyles fathers were helping Voldemort. Was him telling in the book?

Thanks!
 

Ricardo C

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1. Cedric is in PoA, he's the captain of the Hufflepluff team that beats Gryffindor.

2. Yes, but Fudge accuses him of making it up. Fudge's refusal to accept that Voldemort is back leads Dumbledore to declare they have reached a "parting of the ways", and that he will continue the fight without the Ministry's help, if necessary, thus setting the stage for the next book's events.
 

TimJS

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Saw this yesterday, bit of a mixed bag, performances were fine, but as others have no doubt noted, the adaptation will leave non-readers with a shell of a movie with little in the way of character development, relationships, etc.

While some of the alterations were improvements, do not understand why they kept Rita Skeeter (even tho I thought Richardson nailed it) since so little was done with it. Also felt that alterations made to the Crouch story line diminished its importance.

I gave it a 6 on IMDB.

Tim
 

TheLongshot

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Well, you won't understand the hype unless you actually read the books. They are pretty well written yarns, for the most part. No, it isn't LotR, but for YA fiction, it is pretty damn good.

Jason
 

Robert Ringwald

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Kinda got grossed out by the public seeing the movie. During Harry's tub scene I heard a lot of hoots and hollars from adults in the audience... considering the actor was fifteen when they filmed the film, ew.
 

Jason_Els

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Just saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and it struck me as very similar to other film adaptations of enormous books and as I said with the entire Lord of the Rings series, this felt like, "scenes from the book", rather than an interpretation of it. Some ginormous books have made the leap from page to screen and remained familiarly intact; Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Doctor Zhivago are the ones which most readily spring to mind though all of them required substantial revisions to become stories within themselves.

When I purchased my first copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban I hefted it in my hand and said to myself, 'how on earth are they going to adapt this doorstop?'

I don't begrudge Rowling writing hefty books, indeed she is one of the rare writers for whom it seems quantity enhances quality, yet Azkaban and its followers have presented the film producers with a nightmare of impossible deadlines dictated by the physcial maturation of the core cast.

One thing I hope the producers, writers, directors, and Rowling herself learn from The Lord of the Rings films, is the total necessity of keeping a fantasy environment immersive and real. We can all say, "well who hasn't read the books?" and then righteously question, "does it matter?"

I saw the 156 minute running time on IMDB and immediately worried if they could pull this off. Could Goblet of Fire be pulled-off? Azkaban did so but just barely and even then I felt a few critical scenes were sacrificed.

I am happy to say I enjoyed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire immensely. I knew I would. I've read every book at least twice and ace fanpage Harry Potter quizzes with embarrassing frequency. Hell, the whole reason I took the Warner Brothers tour was to see the Harry Potter collection and I even got sorted by THE sorting hat itself (yes folks, I'm in Hufflepuff! SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY). Yet how did I know I would love it?

It's the cast. We get far too little Snape, a marginalized Ginny, and a passing glimpse of Dolores Umbridge but it doesn't matter. Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint have it it out of the park. One of the joys of child actors is their total ability to believe in their parts without needing method teachers to make them remember what it is to act naturally. Now in their fourth turn each one of them has made their respective character grow with them and with the story. Yeah, Watson is a little over the top doing stage acting when a better director would have gently had her tone it down a touch, but who cares? She's Hermione and if she's being theatrical then Rowling didn't write her correctly. :D My one, small beef, is with Michael Gambon. He just isn't the quiet, simple, adorable dumbledore that Richard Harris was and seemed even less-so in this outing. I suppose we can't have Richard Harris back (damn cigarettes), but I still secretly wish for Ian McKellan, Gandalf or no.

The heart of this film isn't the effects, the intrigue, or even the magical world itself; it's watching our friends growing-up and facing both the ordinary and extraordinary trials that even a muggle teen faces. In this sense, it's still very much Rowling's story. Though gutted down to the barest essentials and even then not enough of those, the charm of the book remains. Had Goblet of Fire been given another half to full hour, then everything could have been reasonably covered without requiring such a breakneck pace. And so here begin my complaints:

Throughout watching this film I had to keep imagining what a non-reader must have thought of the film and all I could do was pity them. I'm not asking for Wizarding 101 all over again, been there, done that. What we did need was an explanation of Fleur being part Veela, Madame Maxine being half-giant, we needed to see Charlie, we needed to see Winky, and certainly an explanation of the Dark Mark: all of these characters and events are included later on and need to have a depth to make them feel more than walk-ons and non-sequiturs. Same with Cedric. Though a bit player in the previous books, we at least had an idea who he was. Given more time we could find out, but it seems Newell had Hobson's choice. Either he could introduce every little thing or focus on the true strength of the series; he chose wisely but it the literary equivalent of a three ring circus, he filmed the center ring while ignoring the other two. I'm sure I would have done the same but I'm a perfectionist.

I did not care for Patrick Doyle's flaccid (and predictable) score. While I know plenty of people have problems with Williams, his style is inimitable and poor Doyle isn't up to the task of mating his music with Williams' themes. You hear Williams' themes swell and you expect a soaring, romantic score yet are left feeling like the kid with a slowly leaking balloon. I remember Williams' theme, I don't remember a single passage of Doyle's.

Was the film as dark as it seemed or was it just that I was in a theater with a dim bulb? Blacks were muddy and lacking detail while the colors that should have been zotsy looked flat. The effect was made more pronounced by the numerous close shots that Newell (unlike Columbus and Cuaron) seems overly fond of. The pensieve effects were, I thought, very poor but others were OK but not ground-breaking. I doubt there will be an editing Oscar either. Editing should be fluid and unnoticable but Audsley's constant chop-chop felt jarring and didn't let the story breathe. This is likely due, again, to time constraints, but the best editors can do this sort of thing with alacrity. Pity Newell didn't get someone better suited to the job.

Of the films so far, Goblet of Fire seems the least Rowling-like, the least immersive, and certainly the least convincing. I felt by the end that if I had never read the Harry Potter books I wouldn't care as much about everything I saw or heard. Nowadays however, sequel films don't seem to need to stand on their own. It's expected that the marketing machine has already sucked potential viewers into the vaccuum and if you didn't get IT in the first film or two you aren't going to bother with any others. In a way it's a shame because it seems to subsume the art of cinema into a popular culture paradigm that may, but more likely will not, last forever and thus harming a film's chance of standing on its own long down the road as the earlier Bond films did. I doubt anyone 100 or 500 years from now is going to pull Goblet of Fire off the shelf without an idea of what the Harry Potter universe is like, but I fear that Goblet of Fire will end up lost in translation as culture changes.

For now, I must say that my heart overrules my head, flaws and all, and I'll scoop-up the DVD the day it comes out. I hope against hope that there will be an extended version tailored for DVD but it doesn't seem the producers are taking the same pragmatic view that was pioneered so successfully by the Lord of the Rings producers not too long ago. Perhaps they should take a page from the Rings crew. Harry Potter seems no worse for wear and, if anything, appears to have the same inspiring and devout love that Lord of the Rings engenders in its fans. Had the Harry Potter books been 50 years older as LOTR is, then we might have seen a more similar, vehement fan base demanding that very little fall to the cutting room floor. Of course in 50 years they'll likely re-make these films in experiential 3D you-are-there cinema surround, but this is our time and our cast and crew; all our hope for the series is up to them even if it will take all the magic in Hogwarts and its pupils and faculty to do it.
 

Jonathan T.

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There was hooting during that scene when i saw the movie as well, but i didnt see it as the audience being dirty minded, just having fun.
 

Jason_Els

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Amen! I felt so emotionally constrained. I wanted to bawl like a baby at the end but found myself suppressing my urge out of propriety. I won't get into the constant conversations from the kids behind me or the TEN (yes TEN) times the kids in my aisle clambered over me to get or do something, or the two cell phone ring/chats), or that I paid $8.50 to see the film in an overheated box with stadium seating but with a dim projector bulb and in Dolby STEREO!! Yes, stereo! I tell people constantly the theaters in my area suck but they don't quite believe it can be that bad. It IS that bad! I don't go to the theater now more than 2-3 times a year. I'll wait or... do something questionable... if I can to see a movie before I legally purchase the DVD at the time of release (so there).

I would have much preferred to see this film just with my close friends or alone so I could really get into it and have decent sound.
 

Patrick Sun

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I found the color palette of the film to be drab, which made it very uninteresting to look at. Say what you will about Columbus' direction in the first 2 films, I happened to watch Chambers of Secrets on ABC tonight in HD, and it had a much livelier feel and verve to the overall film's tone. I just couldn't imagine an entire year at Hogsworth that was so drab and dreary for Harry and friends, but that's the impression I got from this film (yes, I'm a non-reader of the books).
 

Jason_Els

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So it's not my imagination or an overly dim bulb (which was dim anyway). I completely agree Patrick, the Hogwarts of Columbus was full of reds and golds. It seemed like a warm, inviting, homey place. The Hogwarts of Cuaron and Newell seems as charmless as Durm Strang. The bled-out palette only makes things more claustrophobic.
 

Jonathan T.

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I paid 12 dollars too see the movie with stadium seating. And another 12 for popcorn (that was old and dried out) and a drink. I too was climbed over a hlaf dozen times, and the buld may well have been dim, i dont know, the movie might just have been dark. I have no idea what the sound format was, but I tell yeah, the sound sucked, no bass, and hardly any audibile direction. I only went because a friend planned a big outing and invited me.

I tell ya, the home theater experience is so far beyond what you get at the theater these days its not even funny. At home I get superb picture quality, sound quality, and my home pooped popcorn costs me about 30 cents and tastes way better.

Studio wonder why cinema attendance is down. I am telling you they can place the blame squarely on the theater chains, the experience provided today sucks, plain and simple. Used to be you when to the theater and it was an event, the theater was quiet and people filed in quietly, and used the time before the movie to get all the talking out of their system. When the lights dimmed, and the curtains were opened everyone hushed and focussed on the movies, which were projected by well paid people who cared about their jobs. Popcorn was hot and tasty, and though it was expensive, you didnt feel cheated because you knew it was paying for the costs your ticket didnt, and hey, you were at least getting a good experience at the movies.

These days you get everything i described in my harry potter experience above, plus peopoe on cell phones, ads on the screen, no curtains, no magic. It just plain sucks. Until theater operators WAKE UP and realize that until they once again offer an experience that somehow eclipses what you can get at home, and at a reasonable cost, attendance will continue to drop.
 

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