Worth the Price of Admission - and then some

Merlin's Movie Review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire It is hard to know how to approach this movie except to say that I really liked it and will probably have a second viewing, maybe even this weekend. First, let me say that you should not go to the movie expecting anything like any of the other movies. Despite my defense of some of the carry-through of the symbolism in the last movie, Prisoner of Azkaban, it did not stand up on its own two feet anywhere near as well as this movie. Movie 3 was really caught in a cross-ground between trying to flow out of the first two movies and trying to move into the territory of being a unique move. A lot of subplots are removed in this movie and it is really the main plot "adapted." The house elf is not present, you get NONE of the back-story of Barty Crouch Sr's involvement in Jr's escape from Azkaban, nor of Rita's animagus form, none of the sideline events at the world quidditch cup, the Ludo Bagman character is melded into Fudge, but simply in the announcing of the match beginning and you have nothing of the quidditch details of Krum getting the Seeker, or the Weasley twin betting with Bagman ... apparently the director of movie 3 was the one who convinced Mike Newell to turn down the studio's offer to make the movie in 2 installments to be released several months apart, and, having seen the film, I think it was the right choice. What I mean by "adaptation" is kind of what I thought about the Lord of the Rings movies, that they have the main characters, the main plot and the main thematic development as the book but are really their won distinct narrative interpretation of that basic story. This is what the third movie does not accomplish. One place you really notice it is the Music ... John Williams was not the primary composer although he is in the credits for "themes". This is a very much more "adult" film - by that I simply mean that in the cinematography and scoring, staging and everything else ... this is aimed at an older age group as a thriller/adventure/action/drama/meaning movie. The music of Tom Waits provides a useful comparison here. There are some of Waits' albums, on in particular, Bone Machine, which I think is a GREAT album, but in which he gets his furthest away from what I would call "traditional music" and more into what I would call well-done "sonic art." This movie is like that in that, while keeping the core of main characters, major instantiations of central themes and main-plot, it develops those elements much more thoroughly in the manner more particular to modern movies, such as variety of adaptations in the score, seriously, the VERY first opening music reminded me of the Matrix and then it was the John Williams Harry Potter theme but with very obvious adaptation and interpretation. The visuals that are not just stunning - as in GREAT special effects ... and it is definitely that - but also unique and distinctive. In other words the musical and visual changes in style are as much a part of the interpretation the movie gives to the story as anything else. A final point about the movie is that the writing of Dumbledore in a "post movies 1 & 2" film has come more into its own and Michael Gambon's acting of it seemed much more natural than as a sort of stand in for Richard Harris. It is really a new (and I think valid) interpretation of the character. In short I found the character as a whole much easier to connect with as an internally consistent whole on its own grounds than in the last movie. I still think the Harris version gets closer to the particular unique flavor of the books but I think this movie's Gambon-Dumbledore hangs together a lot more as an internally consistent and unique interpretation and keeps the viewer in touch with him throughout the film than that in "Prisoner of Azkaban". I think I will always love the first two movies for what they are and like this one for what it is as it stands on its own grounds as a film adaptation and interpretation of the core story in the book. A final thing to note is the diversity of this director's (Mike Newell) career: from Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994, to Donnie Brasco in 1997, to Mona Lisa Smile in 2003. Other Links: Official site IMDB Page Hollywood.com Other Reviews