The Triangle

Issue date: 11/18/05 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: media.movieweb.com

The true brilliance behind J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is how it simultaneously crafts its own magical universe and successfully recreates the growing pains of the teenage years. Although Rowling spends much of her time to organize her scenario in the earlier books, the perfect balance between these two ideas first comes in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a long but compulsively readable book that at once contains impossibly exciting moments and plants the seeds for extremely personal events. It is incredibly sad to learn, then, that the best of Harry Potter's first four books ends up being the worst of his first four movies; it is the first movie since the original (Chris Columbus' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) that feels soullessly, specifically made to perpetuate a franchise.

As his fourth year at Hogwarts begins, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) has been suffering from a series of nightmares; it seems his arch-nemesis, the Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, lost in an underwhelming makeup job) is ready to make a move… what that move may be remains a looming mystery. However, the necessities of school still come calling: Hogwarts is to host the legendary Triwizard Tournament, a series of exceedingly difficult competitive tasks among different wizarding schools, for which the winner will receive "eternal glory." But even when Harry declines to place his name in the running, the magical Goblet of Fire still mysteriously chooses him to participate in the Tournament, making him the unprecedented "fourth champion" to compete. Headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon, acting more sinister than he probably intended) is concerned, and Harry has enough to worry about, but the Goblet of Fire "constitutes a magical contract"; Harry will have to participate whether he wants to do it or not… and no matter how deadly it may be.

After Alfonso Cuaron's darkly mesmerizing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a film which dared to stray away from its source material in order to better serve its subject cinematically, we have a new director (Mike Newell, responsible for Four Weddings and a Funeral) who has returned us to square one: much like the first film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire recounts its book to a slavish degree, and stumbles horribly because it tries to shove it all into two-and-a-half hours. Not an unreasonable problem, but with the original book being about 400 pages longer than Sorcerer's Stone, however, the problem manifests itself tenfold; the script appears to have been edited by a maniac with a red pencil and a pair of scissors. It is not a matter of fan ramblings or hating a movie based on what they took out, but simple dramatic sense: the subplots were not the only victim; the story screams by at an unintelligible velocity and characters interact with each other without any rhyme or reason. Best-of-friends Harry and Ron (Rupert Grint) become angry at each other in a subplot which endangers their friendship but lasts all of five minutes. Characters die and are given funereal tributes by others, but as we have been barely introduced to them, we can hardly be expected to care.

The film is, in fact, so dedicated to what happens in the book that it completely ignores the point behind it all. Harry and Ron rarely deal with the genuine pains of growing up; Hermione Granger (Emma Watson, still the best actress out of the three protagonists) and Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) are forced to pick up the slack with their reduced running times. Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), carefully set up by Cuaron and Columbus as a bully and constant nemesis, is reduced to a grumbling stooge, occasionally given to sneer at Harry's feats. Scenes of action are no longer tense, exciting or even all that magical, which even Columbus' lesser efforts could pull off; Newell's work is just unreasonably loud. And, forgive me for saying, but after talking about him for three books/movies, isn't Voldemort kind of a big deal? Why is his sudden presence treated with all the drama of a troublesome stain?

As can be expected of any bad movie, Goblet of Fire fails to capitalize on the great ideas that it introduces on its own: the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody (Brendan Gleeson), is easily one of the most interesting characters crafted within Harry's world - what with his gruff exterior, mysterious past, and the magic eyeball sticking out of his head. Casting away any initial misgivings, Gleeson is spectacular in the role, offering the growling impression of menace while still keeping his feet planted on the side of the good guys. Unfortunately, this only lasts for one extraordinary scene. After this, he barely ever shows up; once again, as a service to the plot, his only function is to act suspicious until his slam-bang secret is revealed at the film's end (not a spoiler - don't all Harry Potter characters have slam-bang secrets?).

Goblet of Fire doesn't just drop the ball, it punts the ball to the ground; despite being a pronounced turning point in the series, its lackadaisical treatment of its most thematically important subjects becomes infuriating. The film's utter failure is nicely summed up by its final moments, which backhands its climax and gives the impression of "everything will be all right until the next movie." Upon its final fade-out, you realize that you just spent two-and-a-half hours of your life on an unreasonably expensive teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where, I suppose, the saga is really supposed to pick up. It had better pick up, because if there are any more movies like this we may all be jumping ship before Half-Blood Prince hits theaters.

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1/5 Triangles
Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire
Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Directed by Mike Newell
Warner Bros.

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