Harry Potter?!
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a serious contender for the "Worst Harry Potter Movie Evar". And here I thought that nothing could beat the first two.
The 4th HP book is good. I enjoyed reading it very much, but still, I'm not a Harry Potter fanatic. The movie, on the other hand, is a series of butchered scenes randomly edited, poorly performed, but with good visual effects. And this is what this movie has to offer - good visual effects. I guess that there are some people that after watching this atrocity will only remember the dragons or mermaids, but it's still not an excuse for such a horrible, horrible movie.
For those who don't already know, and for those who believe that every movie review should sum up the plot of the movie - here's a short version: After a nasty experience at the Quidditch World Cup, Harry return to Hogwarts for his 4th year. This year Hogwarts is hosting a contest named The Tri-Wizard Contest, which brings student from two other magic-schools to Hogwarts. Even though Harry is not eligible to enter the contest, a small parchment with his name finds its way to the Goblet of Fire, which is the way the contestants are chosen. Now Harry has to survive 3 dangerous tasks, while facing sneer and ridicule from his schoolmates and his best friend, Ron. Here, I managed to avoid spoilers.
Let's start in dissecting the corpse, of what was once a promising movie: Item One - Acting.
The three lead roles, i.e. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) are doing an okay job. They got better from the previous movie(s) and some of the supporting cast are okay too -- the Weasly twins, Neville Longbottom, Prof. McGonagall are worth mentioning in that aspect. Newcomer Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody is tolerable, although very different from what I imagined when I read the book.
Michael Gambon as Prof. Dumbledore is appaling. Awful. Dreadful. Horrendous. Pick your word. His Dumbledore is an impulsive man, quick to anger and yell, physical with his students, and down-right unreliable. Every second he was on screen was like hearing nails scratching a blackboard.
Item Two - Screenplay
It is a difficult job to translate a book to a decent script. Hard, yet not impossible. Hard, but still - someone is getting payed to do it! Steven Kloves, who also worked on all previous screenplays just dropped the ball. Forget dropping the ball - it's like he went and stood on the edge of a high and steep cliff and dropped the ball after filling it with water and tying some rocks to it. This is definitely one of the worst screenplays I have ever seen. I'm not talking about all the sub plots he decided to cut (this I can accept, at least to some degree), and not about the changes he made to the story, so it'll fit his script (which is also something screenplay writers do) - I'm talking about the sub plots he decided to include, but left them at some point just hanging there. I'm talking about serious and important bits of the main plot that mysteriously disappeared. I'm talking about the fact that in the movie it is still a school-year, and people (including our heroes) are studying, yet there are almost no references to school, apart from 2 scenes, one of them was designed to introduce Prof. Moody. I'm also talking about the desperate attempt to create suspense in certain scenes (mainly to the end of the picture) by discarding all the details Rowling gave and making up new and pathetic ways - for example the man-eating maze in the 3rd and final challenge. It is often said that there's simply not enough screen time to show everything and tell everything, but here Mr. Kloves chose to waste valuable seconds of redundant and utterly unimportant scenes (such as the ball and the maze) but dropped key scenes - such as the Marauder's Map or maybe more elementary - introducing the Veelas at the Quidditch World Cup. It is as if the writer took a dull chainsaw and went postal on the book. From what was left he picked several quotes or milestones. It is despicable and amateur and down right bad writing.
Item 3 - Editing
This perhaps is the biggest problem of this movie, which looks like it has been edited by a half blind, half deaf, totally incompetent editor. It is too obvious, even at first view, that the editor had too much raw footage, but was forced to narrow it down to mere 157 minutes. That is 2 hours and 37 minutes. Some scenes were obviously missing. Not just to those who knew what was suppose to happen, but also to the people who sat next to me (whom I doubt if they ever read a book in the last 10 years, let alone Harry Potter) who blinked their eyes loudly and tried to figure out how scene B is relevant to scene A. It seems to me that after working on a project like this for such a long time, the whole crew take certain things for granted or think that it is obvious. This is why we can end up with end products like this.
Item 4 - Directing
The director goes over the script. The director coaches the actors. The director sits with the editor. The director is to blame for this ghastly movie. If Mike Newell is a card-carrying member of any directors guild - he should return his membership card and hang his head in shame. Maybe, just maybe a longer, more detailed "extended edition" will come out and make up for all the holes, but for the meanwhile, it remains probably the worst Harry Potter movie. Publicists like to call this movie a "darker, more matured film". Bubkis! This is bad tailored version of something that used to be a decent story.
Sadly, this latest Harry Potter movie made a lot of money in the box office. How can we expect they learn to better themselves if what the audience is saying is basically "thank you sir, may I have another?"
The 4th HP book is good. I enjoyed reading it very much, but still, I'm not a Harry Potter fanatic. The movie, on the other hand, is a series of butchered scenes randomly edited, poorly performed, but with good visual effects. And this is what this movie has to offer - good visual effects. I guess that there are some people that after watching this atrocity will only remember the dragons or mermaids, but it's still not an excuse for such a horrible, horrible movie.
For those who don't already know, and for those who believe that every movie review should sum up the plot of the movie - here's a short version: After a nasty experience at the Quidditch World Cup, Harry return to Hogwarts for his 4th year. This year Hogwarts is hosting a contest named The Tri-Wizard Contest, which brings student from two other magic-schools to Hogwarts. Even though Harry is not eligible to enter the contest, a small parchment with his name finds its way to the Goblet of Fire, which is the way the contestants are chosen. Now Harry has to survive 3 dangerous tasks, while facing sneer and ridicule from his schoolmates and his best friend, Ron. Here, I managed to avoid spoilers.
Let's start in dissecting the corpse, of what was once a promising movie: Item One - Acting.
The three lead roles, i.e. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) are doing an okay job. They got better from the previous movie(s) and some of the supporting cast are okay too -- the Weasly twins, Neville Longbottom, Prof. McGonagall are worth mentioning in that aspect. Newcomer Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody is tolerable, although very different from what I imagined when I read the book.
Michael Gambon as Prof. Dumbledore is appaling. Awful. Dreadful. Horrendous. Pick your word. His Dumbledore is an impulsive man, quick to anger and yell, physical with his students, and down-right unreliable. Every second he was on screen was like hearing nails scratching a blackboard.
Item Two - Screenplay
It is a difficult job to translate a book to a decent script. Hard, yet not impossible. Hard, but still - someone is getting payed to do it! Steven Kloves, who also worked on all previous screenplays just dropped the ball. Forget dropping the ball - it's like he went and stood on the edge of a high and steep cliff and dropped the ball after filling it with water and tying some rocks to it. This is definitely one of the worst screenplays I have ever seen. I'm not talking about all the sub plots he decided to cut (this I can accept, at least to some degree), and not about the changes he made to the story, so it'll fit his script (which is also something screenplay writers do) - I'm talking about the sub plots he decided to include, but left them at some point just hanging there. I'm talking about serious and important bits of the main plot that mysteriously disappeared. I'm talking about the fact that in the movie it is still a school-year, and people (including our heroes) are studying, yet there are almost no references to school, apart from 2 scenes, one of them was designed to introduce Prof. Moody. I'm also talking about the desperate attempt to create suspense in certain scenes (mainly to the end of the picture) by discarding all the details Rowling gave and making up new and pathetic ways - for example the man-eating maze in the 3rd and final challenge. It is often said that there's simply not enough screen time to show everything and tell everything, but here Mr. Kloves chose to waste valuable seconds of redundant and utterly unimportant scenes (such as the ball and the maze) but dropped key scenes - such as the Marauder's Map or maybe more elementary - introducing the Veelas at the Quidditch World Cup. It is as if the writer took a dull chainsaw and went postal on the book. From what was left he picked several quotes or milestones. It is despicable and amateur and down right bad writing.
Item 3 - Editing
This perhaps is the biggest problem of this movie, which looks like it has been edited by a half blind, half deaf, totally incompetent editor. It is too obvious, even at first view, that the editor had too much raw footage, but was forced to narrow it down to mere 157 minutes. That is 2 hours and 37 minutes. Some scenes were obviously missing. Not just to those who knew what was suppose to happen, but also to the people who sat next to me (whom I doubt if they ever read a book in the last 10 years, let alone Harry Potter) who blinked their eyes loudly and tried to figure out how scene B is relevant to scene A. It seems to me that after working on a project like this for such a long time, the whole crew take certain things for granted or think that it is obvious. This is why we can end up with end products like this.
Item 4 - Directing
The director goes over the script. The director coaches the actors. The director sits with the editor. The director is to blame for this ghastly movie. If Mike Newell is a card-carrying member of any directors guild - he should return his membership card and hang his head in shame. Maybe, just maybe a longer, more detailed "extended edition" will come out and make up for all the holes, but for the meanwhile, it remains probably the worst Harry Potter movie. Publicists like to call this movie a "darker, more matured film". Bubkis! This is bad tailored version of something that used to be a decent story.
Sadly, this latest Harry Potter movie made a lot of money in the box office. How can we expect they learn to better themselves if what the audience is saying is basically "thank you sir, may I have another?"