REVIEW: Stupefy! Stunning, but No Stunner

I was crest-fallen as we found ourselves wedged into the seats right in front of the theatre – the horrific first row! – at the Singapore premiere of the highly anticipated Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 3 days before anyone else got to see it. But the opening sequence of the film quickly took my breath away and submerged me in the world of witchcraft and wizardry, which seemingly cast a strong spell that numbed my senses to any form of discomfort.

The fourth of J.K. Rowling’s 7-book Harry Potter series opens with a nightmare, Harry’s fuzzy premonition that sets the mood for the rest of the movie, signaling the dark times that would soon befall the magical world of Harry Potter’s, even as the youngsters undergo some of the most difficult years as any youth – adolescence. It was, fortunately, a nightmare that Harry could snap out of, unlike the sinister reality that he is about to plunge into.

The merits of this movie are like a double-edged sword. Its best qualities can also be interpreted as its worst, depending on whether one is already fairly familiar with the story or otherwise. Director Mike Newell, well-acclaimed for Four Weddings and A Funeral and Donnie Brasco, takes the audience, now a much expanded one as the young wizards grow up and the story gets darker, on a thrilling roller-coaster ride that is exhilarating but rushed.

The stunning sets continue, if not top, Harry Potter films’ legacy of magnificent visual and special effects. The Quidditch World Cup sequence is breath-taking, reducing all previous Hogwarts Quidditch tournaments to mere child’s play. Scenes such as this become the saving grace of this movie which is a greatly abridged version of the book, leaving little room for the development of new characters and a story that spans more than 700 pages of manuscript. Knowing it is an impossible task to jam all those pages into a two-and-half-hour movie, the writers cleverly focus a major part of the movie on the Triwizard tournament with a few light moments to prevent the movie from being overly dark to the extent of alienating the younger audience.

The Yuletide ball is almost a sub-plot with Harry and the boys fretting over their date possibilities when they are not worrying about Death-eaters. Harry already has a choice but has not the guts. When he finally musters enough of those, the most popular boy in school, Cedric Diggory, beats him to her. The sweet Cho Chang, played by Katie Leung who is an unknown on the film scene, is quite a girl who any hot-blooded adolescent male fantasizes about. But alas, the hunk, that is Cedric, must always have an edge over the school geek (Harry). Poor Harry – when Cho apologetically declines him as her ball date, my heart breaks for him. And this is saying a lot because I have never thought much of Harry Potter. I have always seen him as a dork who, through no fault of his own, is sucked into a maelstrom of magical malevolence, which he does not understand, much less know how to fend himself against.

The Goblet of Fire sees me gaining newfound respect for the boy wizard with the lightning scar on his forehead. Harry is all grown up. Not only physically, but he is also now capable of confronting his past, the evil that’s been stalking him, his emotions. He is capable of destroying and protecting; he is selfless and righteous, earning himself an ally in Cedric who earlier scorns him for cheating himself into the Triwizard Tournament. It is probably his selflessness that saved Harry from doom when the Triwizard Cup turns out to be a portkey that transports both Cedric and himself into the graveyard where Lord Voldemort and the Death-eaters lurk.

An unfamiliar viewer may feel breathless playing catch-up with the plot as one event overthrows its predecessor in quick succession. Even for someone who has read the book like myself, I find the fold of events unraveling far too quickly that some scenes are slightly disjointed. The audience gets the impression that the Triwizard Tournament is a brief affair when in actual fact, it is a tournament that spans the entire school year. As a result, the trials and tribulations that span the entire Triwizard Tournament, which would have been highly entertaining had they made it into the film, are greatly reduced. Each leg of the tournament is actually followed by 3 to 6 months intervals before the next challenge begins, but that is not well-reflected in the film, nor do I remember it being mentioned or suggested that every challenge does not happen within a short space of time from the last.

There is no question that The Goblet of Fire is my favourite Harry Potter story, and perhaps of many other Potter fans as well, because of all the action and colourful new characters found herein. The expanded cast, however, spells headache for the filmmakers. With the entourage from the 2 other schools – Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, the nosey reporter Rita Skeeters, the Death-eaters and Lord Voldemort who are unveiled for the first time, the filmmakers have quite a handful of new characters to design, introduce and develop. The design and introduction of the new characters are almost perfect although I wish the Beauxbatons girls weren’t portrayed so coquettishly. While it is understandable that the new characters’ development need to be compromised on the grounds of time and flow, I am a tad bit disappointed that regular cast members such as Professor Snape, Hagrid and even the brat Draco Malfoy have very little screen time.

This is a movie that will not stun expectant movie goers because the standard has been set by the previous 3 films and everyone’s expectation is high. Only when it falls short of expectation will it create any buzz like that of The Chamber of Secrets which is widely hailed as the weak link in the Harry Potter film franchise. The Goblet of Fire, fortunately, has lived up to the audience’s high expectation, albeit not surpassing it, to claim the title of the best Potter film to date. It has not raised the bar for the next film, The Order of Phoenix, but can the phoenix soar above and beyond? We’ll see.