Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Director: Mike Newell)

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE has been nominated for Art Direction (Stuart Craig, Stephanie McMillan)















Newell has had a long career spanning back into the sixties, but it was 1992's Enchanted April that first got him noticed and Four Weddings and a Funeral that made him somewhat of an "it" director. Then came An Awfully Big Adventure and his best film to date Donnie Brasco. He did the fun Pushing Tin and his last was Mona Lisa Smile. He becomes the first British director to take over the Harry Potter franchise, began by Chris Columbus for the first two and taken over for the better by Alfonso Cuaron for The Prisoner of Azkaban. Steven Kloves (Wonder Boys) adapts J.K. Rowling's novel for the fourth time.

Potter fans know that this installment is the beginning of some dark territory. Coinciding with Potter's entry into adolescence, the boy is about to grow up exponentially over the next couple of years but still have awkward growing up to do. The first three Potters were connected over time by the characters and their growth and they were all important episodes in the overall story, but the next three (and assuredly the next and final) are all intimately connected. What happens here decides the direction of the series. It's the "swing" chapter. Not that anyone knew when they first starting reading this that it would be such a crucial book, because it seemed just like any other Potter with a different set of challenges, and Rowling was just tweaking the narrative a little bit...but she had much more in mind.

In this installment, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) has stayed over at friend Ron Weasley's (Rupert Grint) house for most of the summer, and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) has joined them, for what is going to be an opportunity to watch the Quidditch World Cup between Ireland and Bulgaria. After the match, some hooded figures, "Death Eaters," storm the campgrounds outside the arena and start burning everything down, causing terror, and leaving grand villain Voldemort's mark in the sky. After that, it's another year of school at Hogwarts--except this time they will be playing host to the Tri-Wizard Tournament, where schools from France and Bulgaria will stay for the year to watch the exciting but dangerous series of tasks performed by representatives from each school. The way "champions" are chosen is by putting your name in the giant goblet of fire, and on one special day, it spits out the representatives. Hogwarts's man is Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), but strangely enough, so is Potter's, who didn't try to enter. So, four people have to tackle dragons, merpeople, and a giant hedge maze for various tasks.

Of course, there's still the matter of school. Harry and crew have a new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher in Alastor "Madeye" Moody (Brendan Gleeson), who is teaching them about wicked spells that have never been as much as uttered before, and Harry's developed his first crush in Cho Chang (Katie Leung), and it looks like Hermione is having her first brush with love with Bulgarian Quidditch star and Tri-Wizard rep Victor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski), much to the chargrin of Ron, who harbors secret feelings for the long-time friend.

This is a long, long movie. They've cut a lot of inessential stuff out, but I think perhaps they could have cut a little more--although I admit much of what they could have cut (like a lot of the Yule Ball) is fairly important in the emotional arc of the later books, so it can be forgiven--if you know what's coming. But film fans coming just to see a good movie, who don't know where the series heads, might be turned off by some slow patches here and there. When it focuses on the Tri-Wizard Tournament and especially the consequences of the last task, it's an incredibly involving film at that point. Like I said, it's really the beginning of darker times, and thus, this movie plays like a first chapter of a bigger story.

Michael Gambon returns as Dumbledore (and I can't wait to see him in the next chapters, where he becomes a more imposing figure), Maggie Smith as McGonagall, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid, Miranda Richardson as nosy, wrong-facts journalist Rita Skeeter (who by the way, is representative of what I feel the media is), Warwick Davis as Flitwick, Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, and Ralph Fiennes takes the shape of Voldemort.

Mike Newell continues the series where Cuaron left off, by infusing the film with a little more imagination than Columbus attempted with the first two. The young actors are getting better as well. I expect this to be the first of three $200-300 million grossers this winter, which combined with a lot of other sure hits will stop the nonsense about the slump.