DITOR'S NOTE: Stylus writer Mike LeChevallier was fired on April 28, 2006, for plagiarizing a review of Wild Tigers I Have Known. While we cannot prove definitively that the rest of his film-related work for Stylus was plagiarized in part, or wholesale, we no longer stand by the contents of this article because of disturbing similarities between many of his reviews and similar work found on Slant Magazine.

Four episodes deep into the Harry Potter film translations and thus arrives the first crack in the columns that bear the undeniably elephantine weight of J.K. Rowling’s modern-day zenith of children’s fantasy novels. Where Chris Columbus’ Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets materialize bright and primarily all-around joyfulness (apparent in the characters as well as the cinematography), the third and fourth entries into the massively lucrative series have attempted to address the rapidly accelerating dark and sinister tones and moods of the best-selling books, as well as the commonly developing teenage urges of our magic-fluent heroes. Director Alfonso Cuarón took Prisoner of Azkaban in a sly and intuitive direction; dimming the lush lights of Columbus’ mostly child-oriented pictures and casting an austere shadow over the then 13-year old wizards of the Potter world. In doing this, Cuarón fastidiously underlined the growing adolescence of his central characters as well as the maturity in appearance of the Hogwarts castle grounds, making for the most piquant piece of the Harry Potter story yet to be adapted. Unfortunately, Cuarón made his exit after the completion of Azkaban (he doubtless was relieved to smoothly decamp after thoroughly examining the 734-page paper mountain that is Goblet of Fire). Enter Four Weddings and a Funeral director Mike Newell, whose uncanny ability to delineate unseasoned adoration surely prompted Warner Bros. and veteran Potter producer David Heyman to call upon him to helm this fourth entry. The film consequentially feels rushed at times, which is warranted due to the heftiness of the novel. But what is unforgivable is the contrivance of Newell’s direction. In focusing far too much on the strictly human properties of Harry Potter’s life, Newell masks the most compassionate and magical features of the young wizard’s fourth year.

Issues with Newell’s adaptation surface early in the film as he and screenwriter Steve Kloves slice down sections in which Rowling originally established Harry’s momentous indifference present after the more frightening events that took place in Prisoner of Azkaban. Harry, after four protracted years of nothing but creative magical sparks cascading around his underdeveloped yet heavy mind, continues to demonstrate that “WOW” factor as CGI-spawned marvels endlessly emerge (an example of this is the colossal Quidditch World Cup stadium, in which the cumbersome walls charm stands with color pallets to form images of key Quidditch players). Newell and Kloves, with some slight tweaks, could have reinvigorated Daniel Radcliffe’s (still the least habituated of the film’s crucial three when it comes to verily nailing a scene down to pure emotion) motivation for his character’s out-of-place demeanor. Harry’s reaction to being “mistakenly” selected by the patently minatory Goblet of Fire to participate in the much-lauded Triwizard Tournament is a great deal less than dumbfounded, which is how anyone in that distinct situation, especially Harry with his frequent paranoia of things no one else seems to have a precise opinion on, would be feeling. His tournament battles harbor little suspense for both people who have read the book, and for people seeing this film after the first three, simply because the audience correctly anticipates that Harry will prevail over his toilsome tasks. This was not the case in past films, as Columbus and Cuarón filled the gaps in Rowling’s sometimes long-winded action sequences with Harry’s authentic alarm (one of the emotions Radciffe actually surmounts in portraying) as various somatic and intellective obstacles began to cave in about him.


One string of scenes within Goblet of Fire that do tenure to Rowling’s blow-by-blow young love engineering without losing a sense of magical semblance take place at the munificent Yule Ball, a school-wide dance (or as the somewhat turgid Professor McGonagall, played by Maggie Smith, puts it: “a night of well-mannered frivolity”) in which the Great Hall of Hogwarts is covered in glossy ice and the ceiling is snowing lightly upon the eager students. The presence of jock-like Viktor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski) exasperates Ron (Rupert Grint, who earlier in the film gets a chance to show how pissed off he can look as a cause of Harry’s growing fame), a total novice when it comes to talking to girls, into a flurry of confusion and jealously as the Bulgarian Quidditch king devilishly asks Hermoine (Emma Watson, who is much nicer to stare at than computer-generated dragons or merpeople) to the Ball before he has a chance. Right along side Ron, Harry is having the same problems in finding a date. Surprisingly, Radcliffe’s acting shortcomings in hammering down scenes intended to play off Harry’s and the audience’s key emotions tend to benefit the sections in which his shyness ends up causing him grief. Would that the fantasy elements of the Potter film saga were as whimsical and awkward as the simple act of subsisting young adulthood, Newell could have had the best entry of the series on his hands.

The Dark Lord Voldermort’s (Ralph Fiennes, looking like a dead sea creature in a black cloak) long-waited film appearance proves that it was really not worth waiting for at all. The method in which Fiennes commits to interpret He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named’s personality, a mix of cockiness and pseudo-psychology regarding the fashion in which he murdered Harry’s parents, makes him seem spurious and downright lame. The climactic wand-duel between the foully distorted Aquaman and the still-sulking Harry is imperfect, but is able to hybridize the woeful veins of Harry’s circumstance with his good-hearted nature as a person with a horrendous past.

With three films left in the cannon (the seventh book will not see store shelves for at least a year), and the now on-going tradition of shifting directors (British TV-exec David Yates is slated to direct Order of the Phoenix), the Potter series may indeed be able to hoist itself back up to the high watermark that the first three films constructed. For now, Goblet of Fire stands as the series’ sketchiest entry. Although it succeeds in not dragging on like some parts of previous films did, its level of wonderment settles somewhere just below average. It is a film that calls to be seen by anyone interested in the Potter franchise, but not by anyone who does not want to be let down. Sure to say, the chin-rubbing Mike Newell has created an entertaining paradox in which the band supplying the music at the Yule Ball are actually playing their instruments (normal guitars, drums, and keyboards) with their hands and not with their wands.