We just got home from watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'll start by saying there's just not enough Hagrid in this movie. When Hagrid appeared, my daughter whispered in my ear, "There's your boyfriend." But the story about Hagrid and Madame Maxime, being a subplot, was almost completely skipped over. The Harry-Voldemort encounter was medium-good and the underwater sequence was stunning, especially knowing that there were no stunt swimmers for Daniel Radcliffe who had to learn how to swim underwater for the movie. The mer-people were beautiful and creepy. The third part of the tri-wizard tournament in the maze was technically cool but so disjointed that I just felt frustrated watching it. Mad-Eye Moody was neat, and it was great to see Moaning Myrtle in the bathtub with Harry. The new characters, Victor Krum, Fleur Delacourt and Cedric Digory were well-cast and engaging, but there was not time for development as the movie raced to fit the story in without being 22 hours long. The coming-of-age love story with Harry, Ron and Hermione getting dates to the Yule Ball felt like a different movie plunked into the middle of an adventure story and was edited in seeming random fashion. It's felt like somebody argued about putting more or fewer sequences in then they just gave up and walked away before getting it right short or long.
If you love Harry Potter I would still recommend that you see it in the theatre, but it's definitely a disappointment, especially after The Prisoner of Azkaban. We didn't even get to see the first 3 dragon fights! Which reminds me, with the exception of one dragon and the mermaids, a couple of brief owl snapshots and Draco being transfigured into a ferret, there were not enough creatures, magical or otherwise. But I guess that's just another way of saying, not enough Hagrid.
question: why do we always watch the movie when we know it can never be the book?
mompoet - heart still open to the Potter stuff, despite it all
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