Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

So I was kind of worried about this movie a little, because the book was just so long and I didn't know how cutting so much stuff out was going to affect the movie. I knew in advance that I'd probably end up being disappointed at some things, but I think that overall they did a pretty good job at condensing everything. The movie is heavily focused on the Triwizard Tournament and not so much on the whole school year in general. The bulk of the movie involves the 3 tasks, along with a detour to the Yule Ball. They also simplified the plot slightly, cutting out Winky altogether, and Sirius barely appears.

That said, the movie did feel kind of rushed. Each task of the tournament felt like it was taking place right after the previous one, and there wasn't much time for character development really. I kind of felt deprived of scenes where Harry, Ron, and Hermione are just talking things over. Actually I felt like there wasn't really that much dialogue in general: this was much more of an action movie than the previous three. Prisoner of Azkaban (which is still my favorite by far) flowed really well and had a dark but sort of calm style to it. This one was much more fast paced and at times I felt like the transitions were too hasty. John Williams was replaced by Patrick Doyle for the score so the music was also very different.

The CGI and effects and everything really were excellent though. The dragons were great and the underwater stuff looked really good. The graveyard scene at the end was also very well done. Strangely while I was reading the books I never pictured in my head what Voldemort was going to look like at all, so seeing him was really interesting, and Ralph Fiennes was perfectly scary and creepy. I also really loved Mad-Eye Moody. I had sort of pictured him as being more tall and skinny but Brendan Gleeson really grew on me throughout the movie.

I could probably talk about the movie forever, the things I liked and didn't like, so I should probably restrain myself a little here. But my favorite scene was probably the one where Fred asks Angelina to go the Yule Ball with him. It was funny in the book too, but the way they did in the movie was just awesome. My least favorite scene was the introduction of the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Each group did a little routine entering the Great Hall and it was really just stupid.

So my final verdict: enjoyable but not as good as Prisoner of Azkaban. They also really skimped on the explanation of what happened at the end and I wonder if people who hadn't read the books would be confused...