The movie doesn’t quite live up to the book

Harry Potter in The Goblet of Fire

How would you like a taste from The Goblet of Fire ? I think you will find it rather pleasing if not exactly spellbinding.

My mom and I took in the 3:45 pm showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at Wynnsong Cinemas in Forest Acres last Friday. I am an adventure junkie, special effects freak, and a bit of a stickler for having my movies follow the book. This movie did exceedingly well with two of these areas, but fell a bit short in the third.

I must say the special effects were nothing short of spectacular. The Merpeople were really just as I had imagined them, and the underwater scenes were stunning. Those scenes were almost exactly as I had constructed them in my mind as I read the book.

What there was of the dragon battle was impressive, but we saw too much flying and dodging and too little actual battle for my taste. By far the freakiest scene was the resurrection of Lord Voldemort. It was like a cross between Blade and Alien . The little kids in the audience squeaked a bit here, but there wasn’t too much else that was all that scary. I remember the book as being much more dark and sinister.

On the matter of adventure, there was plenty of that. This was after all, The Tri–Wizard Tournament, and the cup was a portkey! If you don’t know what a portkey is, I won’t spoil it for you, but it was a perfect catalyst for some of the movie’s finer action.

I will share some of the adventure with you without letting on too much. Let’s see, there was the Quidditch World Cup, the return of the Deatheaters, The Dragon Challenge, The Underwater Odyssey, the Maze Misadventure, and the final showdown with “He Who Shall Not Be Named.”

The segment I could have done without was the scene with Moaning Myrtle in the Prefects fifth floor bath. I was as uncomfortable as Harry was, and I wasn’t even in there!

I guess you can tell that so far the movie is rating five stars, but we’ve only discussed two of my keen areas of interest. I missed Dobby, the mischievous house elf who caused so much grief in the last book and would have provided some of the much needed background explanation had he not been omitted entirely from the movie.

As I remember it, Dobby, not Neville, provided the gilly weed for Harry’s underwater escapades. It was also Dobby who, through his house elf network, explained how Barty Junior came to be out of Azkaban. Faux Moody swigged a bit too much polyjuice potion a bit too obviously all through the movie and gave away that something was amiss way too early.

We needed to have seen some more of what went on behind the scenes at the World Quidditch Cup Matches to understand how Harry and Ron came to be so at odds. It was more than just Harry’s name popping out of the cup! The part I missed most was seeing Hermione actually bust the annoying animangus, Rita Skeeter and jam her into a jar to stop her giving the press a bad name!

I know it was a long book, and they had to cut something to fit it nicely into a movie, but I do think they might have chosen to take out the wrong things and jumble the story a bit in the process. So, not that it was a bad movie, but I was disappointed in some of the choices. Therefore, I rate this movie four stars, mostly for excellent acting, spectacular special effects, and terrific action sequences. It loses a star on accuracy because the reading public will note some glaring omissions and poor decisions that may come back to bite the producers in the next movie. All in all, it is still well worth the ticket price and provides a good afternoon or evening of entertainment for loyal Harry Potter fans.