Saturday, November 26, 2005

Jaynee, Denis, and I went to see HPatGoF last night while my parents babysat the Cootiekids. We arrived with little time to spare to find the movie theater packed with people. Denis and I ordered our food and Jaynee went into the theater to get our seats. She did an excellent job; we were on the last row of the middle section smack dab in the middle of the row. I love stadium seating in theaters! And the showing we went to was full - lots of older kids with their parents. Good crowd.

You can assume that what follows will be slightly spoilerish, unless you’ve read the book, of course. But even book readers may not remember what happened in that particular book anymore; I know I didn’t remember some things until the movie brought them back to mind. For me, the books have become a running story in my head with the individual books not standing out in specific detail. Anyway...consider this your spoiler warning.

The movie get right into things. There’s little build up; they assume you know what’s happened in the first three movies. If you haven’t seen the first three, you’ll catch on quickly, but I recommend that you rent those movies first if you want to truly enjoy this one. For enjoy it you shall - it is excellent and I think it may be the best of the four so far.

What came to my mind, too, is that the movies are growing up as much as the kids. By that I mean that the style and feel of the first two movies was more childish - not necessarily cartoonish, but much more young child friendly. The third movie got a little darker as the story did as well. This new installation of the story was very much “older” in book format - the kids are now teenagers with all that goes along with that; the menace of Voldemort increases and as such Harry’s responsibilities increase also.

We noted later that Goblet the movie has less overt magic or the teaching aspect of the story than the previous movies. This one is definitely more character driven. But there’s plenty of action - the Quiddich World Cup scenes are magnificent as are the Tri-Wizard competition tasks. The special effects are very well done, to the point that I never really made a mental note about how good they are as I normally when watching a movie. I was completely enthralled with the movie as it progressed.

The actors were brilliant - I didn’t think anyone could surpass Richard Harris as Dumbledore, but Michael Gambon was very good. Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort was excellent casting. I love Brendan Gleeson and his MadEyed Moody was very fun. The casting that made me giggle was Katie Leung as Cho - she’s lovely, but I never expected the Scottish accent to come from her lips for some reason. Turns out she is Scots-born and comes by it naturally. The others that I really loved were the twins that played the Weasley twins - hilarious.

Actually, the movie as a whole was incredibly funny. They got the whole teen angst thing perfectly and the kids acted so well that I felt that they weren’t really acting most of the time. And my, how those kids have grown up!

On the whole, I think Harry Potter fans will love this movie. I can’t wait for the next two installments. Parents: be aware that the film rating is appropriate. Younger kids might be scared at some of the scenes, especially the last 10-15 minutes. I know that Holly had her eyes covered during much of that part because she’s sensitive to those kinds of scary images. And they are scary, even for adults.

HPatGoF gets 4.5 stars out of 5.