Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Brendan Gleeson, Gary Oldman, Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Robert Tennant, and Ralph Fiennes
When the third “Harry Potter” film rolled around, a friend of mine (The Amused) complained that the production design, direction, and acting had so far outclassed what the movie was actually doing that it was beginning to get embarrassing. I’m starting to understand what he means.
For the first third or even the first half of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” I couldn’t care less about what was happening, but I was having a great time watching it. Story keeps piling on, things keep exploding, and there’s so much flash and noise. All I could think was that these characters no longer held any interest for me. “Harry Potter” is as big a soap opera as “24” and “Desperate Housewives,” which are, weekly, 50 minutes of nonsense followed by some nugget of information concerning the “overarching story.” And, assuming I ever did care why Harry has superpowers or why Recurring Villain can’t kill him no matter how many tickets the “Potter” movies sell, I’ve long since stopped.
In summary, “The Goblet of Fire” is largely more of the same, all in service of some new shred of information that die-hard “Potter” fans can’t wait to jam into the puzzle. Again, a new teacher shows up who’s not what he seems and is played by a famous British character actor. This time, in place of Kenneth Branagh and David Thewlis it’s Brendan Gleeson (“The General,” “Gangs of New York”). Again, the studentry alternately loves and hates Harry. Again, Harry is mysteriously allowed access to something he shouldn’t be. Again, Harry is picked on by the same kid who’s picked on him for the last three movies. Again, Recurring Villain strikes fear in the hearts of everyone, despite the fact that they’ve vanquished him 4 or 9 times before. Again, teachers talk in hushed, suggestive voices about things too awful to speak in the day, and shuttle behind closed doors just as Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) or Girl (Emma Watson) or Sidekick (Rupert Grint) have overheard some plot convenient bit. Again, Harry saves the day by using powers he didn’t even know he had. (When Brendan Gleeson asks him what his best skills are, he really should have said “Deus ex machina has worked pretty well for me so far.”)
Again, characters use “they” as a singular pronoun when the more grammatically correct “he or she” would better suit the English boarding school atmosphere for which the filmmakers seem to be aiming. It’s so grating to hear a great, classically trained actor like Michael Gambon say “if any student has seen anything, THEY should come forward!” I guess noun-pronoun agreement can’t be squeezed in with flying brooms and magic weed. Again, the characters still don’t really leave Hogwarts magic school for more than a couple of minutes. I complained of this in my review of the first movie; I wonder how I would have felt if someone told me they would never leave Hogwarts for seven movies, even for a field trip.
But, wow, does it all look great. There’s an 18th-century sailing ship that can submerge. There are swarms of mer-people (mermaids and mermen). Harry grows gills and flippers and swims like a fish. A dragon chases him across the roof of his school. The eponymous dish spurts ethereal blue fog. Harry bathes in a cave. He gets lost in an XXXL hedge maze that closes and changes around him. Brendan Gleeson has an artificial googly eye like something out of “City of Lost Children” that gets an inordinate amount of laughs. Harry falls into a magical fountain that lets him eavesdrop on the trial of a wizard. Enchanted Klansmen come from the sky and burn everything. Recurring Villain returns and grows back everything but his nose. Yikes.
Then a funny thing happens, about a third or a half way into this rambling, 157-minute behemoth. The B plot starts. It has nothing to do with the A plot—which is some sort of magic contest or something that appears to put the entire student body in jeopardy, again—and is kind of a drag if you’ve actually been paying attention. I wasn’t. So the B plot, which is like a movie within a movie, was very entertaining. There’s a dance at Hogwarts. The boys and the girls begin to notice for the first time that they have different bits and pieces, so to speak. It’s not that the movie is so much interested in “who likes whom,” but it’s more like a documentary of those awkward glances, shifting stances, and the nervous stuttering of 14-year-olds. And they just happen to go to a magic school. I could have done without the whole “evil resurrection” plot and just watched this.
There’s a great bit where Harry and Sidekick are sitting alone with their dates, absorbed in looks of contemptuous envy while everyone else is dancing. Sidekick’s date finally groans “are you going to ask me to dance?” and the way Sidekick says “no” is perfect in its pity-for-all resignation. This is followed by another stellar throwaway scene in which Sidekick makes Girl screaming, crying mad. It’s comparable to a similar scene between Scarlett Johansen and Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation,” and reminds us that the ability to make a woman really, really mad is more precious than anything in the world. The director is Mike Newell, most famous for the audience-dividing “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” My opinion of that film is that it’s mostly a good movie with a bad one tacked on to make for a happy ending. The good parts are the Altman-esque, vaguely documentary segments of well-drawn, insecure characters milling about at wedding receptions. The same can be said for “The Goblet of Fire”—these characters have become rich enough, and the place where they live is delightful enough, that I half-wish the movies would abandon their rigid fidelity to the books and go wherever the characters lead them.
Even the new characters appear less interested in advancing the plot than in hanging out with each other. Harry forms an uneasy friendship with a dreamy older boy during the course of the magic contest. The older boy is popular and beloved, yet, like popular boys everywhere, half-imprisoned by his own popularity. How he goes from pitying Harry to helping him and finally to respecting him feels right.
So does “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” work? Maybe not the way it wants to, but there are plenty of isolated good scenes and an endless reservoir of visual invention. The third act pulls things together, the way third acts do in “Harry Potter” movies, as we find our hero running through a hedge maze while older members of the audience hoarsely moan “Danny!” I could keep on going, about how the series seems to have reached that crossroad where it can either continue being good movies or it can continue being faithful to the books, but it can’t do both—but I won’t go on about that right now.
Finished Saturday, November 19th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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