Eyebrows

I love the internet. If it were a person I would gladly throw myself at their service simply because they were so generous.

Through this technical marvel I was able to download and watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night. True, the quality of picture wasn’t exactly stellar but it was definitely watchable. And watch it I did.

Now, I didn’t really care for the first three films. One and two were so childish as to be rather embarrassing. Three, which held a lot more promise, was let down by the refusal of the child actors to act properly, resorting to ridiculous overacting (Emma Watson’s eyebrows I’m looking at you here) or simply not acting at all (Daniel Radcliffe’s “They were my parents!” strop came off as just that, a girly tiff rather than an explosion of hatred).

This time, however, they hit the nail on the head. Goblet of Fire is by far the best of the Potter books just as this is by far the best of the films. The kids can actually act in this one, you actually sympathise with them and there are some genuinely tense moments between Harry and Ron. Hermione still overacts though.

Moody is fantastic. Brendon Gleeson is quickly becoming one of my favourite British actors and he really brings something to a character than is perhaps my favourite from the books. Alan Rickman is also mind melting good again, even though he only gets about 3 lines of dialogue this time around. The only cast disappointment is Dumbledore. I thought Michael Gambon was shaping up to be a good Dumbledore, better than the “on deaths door” version playing by Richard Harris (however ironic that sentence may be). However, in this he’s not good. He isn’t Dumbledore from the books at all; I won’t spoil it but the scene after Harry’s name comes out of the Goblet is especially bad.

Voldemort is in this one. He looks great, he really does but he lacks any real menace. In fact, he lacks any menace at all, were it not for his makeup he would’ve been less imposing than Lucius Malfoy (who makes a welcome return). His “birth” scene is great though and would’ve scared the crap out of me if I’d seen it when I was 10.

The Special Effects in general are amazing. The start of the World Cup has to be seen to be believed (as clichéd as that may be), the dragon fight is excellent stuff and the merpeople are great too. It’s the little things that set it apart from the other films though; Sirius’ firey communiqué, the Unforgivable curses realised, the various shapechanges that some characters go through are brilliant (if rather disturbing) and even the design of the Water challenge seating is fantastic. (trust me).

Most importantly however, I think Hogwarts was done justice to in this film. In the others it just felt like somewhere the story could take place in; a location. Here it feels like a community. Many of the bit parts excluded from Prisoner of Azkhaban (Neville, Seamus etc) return in this and the film finally gets across that Harry, Ron and Hermione are not the only students at their school.

Although the film is noticeably darker, both literally and in story, it was still to me the closest to its literary counterpart. True, huge chunks have been missed out (gone are most of the Quiddich World Cup, Dobby, Winky, Ludo Bagman, Percy Weasley and the House Elf liberation attempt by Hermione) but I actually didn’t miss any of them all that much (maybe apart from the world cup which we are teased with but never really shown). Despite all of these losses, it felt the same as the book; foreboding but, for the time being, optimistic.

So, very good then. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the book. Really, I think the highest compliment I can pay to this is that it’s the first of the films to really remind me of how good the books are, and the first time I truly thought the characters from the books had hit the big screen in full.