Kevin's review (opening night): There were lines down everywhere for this movie. It was in seven theaters out of twenty four. We had to be in there seventy minutes before to ensure a decent seat. And for what? Three hours of a jumbled mess. The setup in general of wizards school, these three friends, and chasing a bad guy Harry wants. But in this episode, the mid-point of the series of 7 movies, it's more like a break with the TriWizard competition. This three hour movie has no plot. Goblet moves from one huge set piece to the next with no narrative drive, pushing the story forward. First sequence is a lot of tents all around what looks like Beachy Head (high chalk cliffs) for the Quiddich final, and the tents are attacked and everything catches fire and looks like a war zone. Soon we're back for Harry's fourth year and a jerky teacher provides comic relief. The blustering headmaster (=Principal) describes the rules of the Triwizard competition: three big competitors. Names don't go into a hat; they go into the goblet of fire, an olympic-like burning vessel. It's all very striking and visual. The competition is a serious tough men's school and a dapper ladies school in blue bonnets. Very nicely done. Somehow the goblet picks Harry, even though he's too young. But rules are rules, especially in magic school. Did Harry put his name in? He claims no. Of course, no one believes him. His friend Ron quickly gets pissed, and only shows a smile when some of the blue girls peck him on the cheek. Ah. The teenagers are growing up, interacting with the opposite sex. It's all very flirty and no big scenes on this, that just seems to be the theme this time. Soon there's an enormous term-end ball and the girls and boys must dance. This has a lot of mileage, and works well. The awkwardness, the looks of our characters thrown into these situations plays for a lot of laughs. Harry keeps getting his recurring dream about the caretaker Riddle meeting Voldermort, Harry's arch-enemy. An earlier scene had a snake slithering towards a house. We have to wait a long time for the bad guy to show, and when he does it's the normally handsome Ralph Fiennes made ugly; this is a dumb casting move. There's some stuff in the forest, some aside jokes with the fat Scottish guy and the lady headmistress of the girls school dancing. But that's about it. Each episode has a bizarre new teacher; this one has some guy with a wandering eye. You cringe to look at him. There's also a reporter who seems to exist to embarass Harry the most. She doesn't report the truth; she gets it wrong. The newspaper comes to life, literally.


Overall, the movie although it touches the usual bases is actually a huge disappointment, scenes seem to lurch forward like some old steam engine, lots of big set pieces. Oh, the TriWizard competition? Some flying sequence, an underwater sequence in which Harry uses some gilliweed to breathe longer, and a maze sequence that has the hedges crowding in and eating people. As another English production once said: "Damn it all, Hedges." The normally reliable Hermione has little to do. She goes to the ball with an older boy, and she pisses that Ron never asked her soon enough. But the radiance and sparkle she had in earlier Harry Potter movies is absent. Next time they'd better engage us in a riveting plot. One might argue it's a difficult job to cut a 654 page book down to a three hour movie. Difficult or not, it still has to be done right.