GoF: Reaction Shot 1
Overall, the GoF movie was very good. Better than I had expected, in fact. Has taken second place behind PoA as far as my movie rankings go, which is higher than GoF's place in my book rankings. Kudos to the HP film team.
Now for some knee-jerk reactions. First off, the acting.
Dan Radcliffe is really starting to develop some acting chops. He still has a lot to learn, and even now his line delivery doesn't flow entirely naturally -- especially not with exposition or monologues. As far as fast-paced interactive dialogue with other actors, though, he is becoming truly talented. Also, in PoA he cried after finding out Sirius was his godfather, and it sounded SO fake. But in this, the one time he cried (a scene which I will come back to)... well, wow. Raw, ugly, and very, very real. I have high hopes that he'll stay on for the next three, because I really think he'll be quite a darn respectable actor by 6 or so.
Rupert Grint was finally given something other than comic relief with the fighting-with-Harry bits and the (unfortunately underwritten) money issues, and I think that, given the opportunity, he could really improve into something worth watching. His comic relief is all right, but pretty much anyone could pull it off, what with the way it's written. He's also starting to look too old for the part, although it's not too bad yet; Ron is supposed to be bigger than Harry and Hermione, and is forever going through growth spurts.
Emma Watson... eurgh. I'm sorry, but... eurgh. She made a believeable 11-year-old, and even 12-year-old. But she's supposed to be 14 now, and she hasn't really changed the way she plays her character, and it just does not work any more. Hermione gives off absolutely no "smart" vibes anymore -- smartass, maybe, but not smart. The girlification of Hermione is also extraordinarily grating -- her Yule Ball dress is BLUE. JKR spends whole paragraphs describing its EXTREME BLUENESS, dammit. Emma's acting ability hasn't changed much from SS, either. Her lines sound unnatural in the extreme. For example, in order to emphasize a line of dialogue, she doesn't actually emote -- she just talks. like. there. is. a. period. after. every. word. Emma, a word of advice -- do NOT be misled into the Shatner School of Erratic Acting.
My last major acting concern: Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. I really liked him in PoA. He brought a hint of life back to Dumbledore, who in the hands of the (much respected by me, of course) Richard Harris had seemed almost too old and frail to be alive. And Gambon's retake was good; it was appropriate, with just that hint of vitality, that "sparkle" in the eyes behind the half-moon glasses. It was great. But in GoF, I'm afraid he overdid it. In some scenes it was great, just the same as PoA -- a hint of vitality, almost a hippie quality, like he contained untapped depths of strength but chose to be slow and wise instead. UTTER Dumbledore. But much of the rest of the time, he just moved too fast. He turned quickly; he paced; he flung his scant weight about the screen as if he had to be in all places at once. And suddenly, then, the hidden depths were just... gone. Especially when he actually shows Harry his worry and his weakness -- when he sits down and puts his head in his hand and says it right out. That was just NOT Dumbledore, at all. The ending of 6 relies absolutely on Dumbledore never showing weakness before that point, with the exception of the single tear at the end of 5. Where Harris' Dumbledore seemed too old, Gambon's GoF Dumbledore seemed too young -- too impulsive and not-quite-in-control. And Dumbledore must ALWAYS be in control. It's the whole point.
Other than that, the other returning actors were great. James and Oliver are, as always, utterly hilarious. Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman still totally kill as McGonagall and Snape -- and may I just say, the scene with McGonagall and Snape both advising Dumbledore, and then Dumbledore hesitating before saying, "I believe you... Severus."? That scene was excellent. Especially in light of book 6. Oh yeah, baby. Anyway... Krum = okay. Not exactly the big, craggy guy of the book, but okay. Fleur = okay, also. They downplayed her prettiness. I appreciate that. Cedric = excellent. He really gave off that air of mild, sportsmanlike likability and kindness that could easily have been forced or overplayed. I found myself liking him more immediately in the movie than I did in the book, as a matter of fact. Moody = STOLE THE MOVIE. OMG. Moody was brilliant. And there was a very nice touch of continuity with the little tongue-flick mannerism in both fake-Moody and Crouch, Jr. Who was also quite good, acting-wise. Over-the-top nuts, but that's okay -- he was supposed to be over-the-top, even in the book. Barty Crouch Sr. was not given enough screentime to really determine his characterization one way or the other... I was kind of sad to see the fighting-the-Imperius scene go (in which he talks to a tree), and of course we don't really know that he was under the Imperius, or even that Percy is his secretary. But for things to cut, it wasn't the worst they could have done. Same thing with the Rita Skeeter subplot. I can see how her Animagus-beetle thing would've felt tacked-on after the emotional climax of the third task and Dumbledore's speech. Same thing with Sirius showing up and Harry re-explaining the events of the evening (although, of course, I was very sad to see any scene involving Sirius go. Dammit). Voldemort... well, Ralph Fiennes is ALWAYS creepy. He's just a scary-looking human being. Give him a squished nose and a skeletal body and tell him to scare the hell out of a fictional 14-year-old boy, and, well, he can do a pretty damn good job of it. I think he scared the audience a bit less than he scared Harry, but... oh well. Villains are just really hard to do well. I can forgive the slight scenery-chewing.
Now for the story aspects. First... THE HORROR. Okay, yes, there were poorly-done things in the first three movies -- less so in the third -- but there was nothing that I would have considered absolutely, disgustingly AWFUL. The Yule Ball was just that. I was okay with the waltzing and the teenage awkwardness, although it was boring as hell... AND THEN IT TURNED INTO A RAVE. OMGWTFBBQ. I nearly cried. I had to pee for the whole movie -- I really should've taken that opportunity to do so, but, in my masochistic madness, I stayed through the whole thing. Ugh, ugh, ugh, and for good measure: UGH. Something has finally beaten that incredibly sickening dream Aragorn has about Arwen in Two Towers -- the one where he wakes up kissing his horse? Yeah. It sucked so much worse than anything ever. In the words of NaNoWriMos everywhere: it sucked LIKE A HORSESHOE.
And now for the good bits, to wash THAT foul taste out. *shudder*
Of course I must mention The Ferret Scene! It was perfect! Less cruel than the book, too, because Moody doesn't bounce Draco off the floor (which would really HURT, and maybe break something), he just waggles him around in the air. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. The whole audience applauded, and it was well-deserved.
The tasks themselves were well-done -- better than the book, in fact, although that is PURELY my opinion. I did not care so much for the 4th book, to be honest. It was too much about the sports and the hormones. But I've discovered upon watching the movie that the Triwizard Tournament itself, by its very nature, is more cinematic than prose-y. It translates extremely well to film. You can get a lot more worked up over being roared at by a huge, very real-looking dragon and watching Harry fly really really fast to get away from said dragon (although the whole flying-around-the-castle thing was stupid and unnecessary...) than you can at a lengthy description of the same thing. JKR does character and emotion better than straight action, I think, and that's what the Tournament is -- pure action, not all that emotionally involved. Although one thing the Tournament aspect kind of ruined for the film was any sense at all of the passage of time. You just didn't get the sense that the movie covered a whole school year. PoA was the only one of the movies to manage that, IMO.
Now for pure, all-around excellence. There were two scenes that really stood out to me: Moody's first class, and Harry's return from the graveyard. Moody's class... perfect. Simply perfect. Not overplayed, not chewed like old cud -- just the right balance of new-teacher-awkwardness from the students, frantic pacing, constant low-level hysteria from Moody -- and brilliant, brilliant performances on the parts of Moody, Neville, and Hermione. The Imperius curse part literally just played the whole audience like a piano -- I mean, seriously. Everyone in that room was laughing right along with the students (spider on Draco's face? eeeexcellent) until Moody's sudden, near-sickening turnaround -- "What should she do next? Throw herself out the window?" A sudden, faltering descent from hysteria to realization; and then Moody, more quietly: "Drown herself?" And the spider is suddenly no longer funny in the slightest, and the whole audience became utterly silent, just like the class on the screen. It was amazing how easily played the audience was, even though surely everyone there had known what was coming. And after that, the Cruciatus demonstration... that just hurt. Everything about it hurt. As did Avada Kedavra, especially because of Hermione's refusal to say the incantation and her harshness after the class scene was over. Only time in the whole movie when I really liked her. And Neville... just... poor Neville. Wow.
The other truly excellent scene was the bit right after the third task. Cedric's death, as in the book, was too sudden to have any real impact; and Priori Incantatem, while well-done, was not nearly as engrossing as it was in the book (I noticed they avoided the whole "who emerged first, Lily or James?" controversy by having them emerge at the same time). But when Harry Porkeyed back from the graveyard with Cedric's body -- that was killer. I had not cried at all in the first three movies -- I had only misted up when, in PoA, Harry watches the replay of the scene outside the Willow where everything goes to hell (you can just see his dreams falling down around him, and it hurts) -- but I was truly horrified and emotionally torn by this particular scene in GoF. The band playing and the crowd cheering while Harry clings to Cedric and sobs -- not just pretend crying, either, but raw, ugly crying involving funny noises and mucus -- and then the slow dawning of realization from the people closest to the ground, and Fleur screaming... and then Amos Diggory realizing, and pushing through the crowd... And the best part was that it was so intimately close to the spirit in which that scene was written. Well done, everyone involved. Truly, awesomely well done.
So... um... yeah. I can't think of anything else to address right now. I'm sure I'll remember something later... I may go see it again, in fact, and I always catch something new the second time around.
Ultimate conclusion: pretty much a hit, and not too much of a miss. At least it's well-balanced that way.
EDIT: And oh yeah, may I just say -- there were WAY too many very small children in the audience where I saw it? I mean, I'm good with scary stuff, always have been -- I grew up on The Last Unicorn, and can we say bare-breasted harpies, scary old witches/corrupt kings, and gory deaths by flaming bulls, oh my? -- but this was simply NOT a children's movie. Between Cuaron and Newell, they've really succeeded in hauling HP out of that Happy Kiddie Playground aura that Columbus created for it. It's even been upped to PG-13 for GoF. The opening credits play over an image of a tombstone with a grim reaper statue on it -- light years away from the warm colors of the first 2 or even the sort of happy-secretive scene of Harry, ahem, "playing with his wand" in PoA. Everything related to Moody's first class, the scenes from Dumbledore's Pensieve, and the third task... I'm a pretty equal-opportunity person, but for goodness' sakes, even I wouldn't ask a small child (like, five- and six-year-olds were in that theater!) to understand and enjoy all these scenes of death and horror and pain and politics. Good grief. And these parents had better get over the idea that HP is a children's franchise, because movie 5 and especially 6 -- if they're done right at ALL -- are going to be worse than 4 in terms of traumatizing content.
-rave