Harry Potter!

Nov 19, 2005 20:05



The AJC described the fourth Harry Potter movie as the best Harry Potter yet. By which standards are we judging?

If we're saying by acting/direction, I have a few problems with that. The acting from the senior actors is as true and on-the-mark as ever, so I'm assuming that most people critique "acting" when referring to the child actors. In that case, I saw very little progress from the third movie, whereas the jump from two to three was huge. Not enough to get all in a tizzy over, anyway. Ron has been increasingly reduced to comic-relief, and the "good ship Harmony" looked damn near to sailing from where I was sitting. The direction reminded me a bit of the first two movies; true, the happy yay-it's-a-kids-movie-let's-be-immature look was gone, but there was nothing original. The cinematography was lackluster at best, but I'll get to that later. I have a lingering criticism from the third film: stop rushing the good parts! I don't care about Harry in a tub with a ghost, but I do care about the scene in the graveyard! Give the important scenes more time to play themselves out; just because you're playing to a younger audience doesn't mean they'll get bored. The emotional moments weren't as emotional, either; not that I didn't have problems with the emotional bits in the third movie, but they were better than these.

Visuals/CGI: I'll start with the CGI, since I actually have some good things to say about that. I thought that on the most part, it was pretty good; my favorite shots were the ones of Sirius in the fire: different from the book, but still inventive and well pulled off. I also like the dragon/broom chase, despite the bizarre nod to King Kong. Most of the shots were well integrated with the rest of the movie, so I thought that was pretty good. That doesn't mean I liked the look of the whole movie, though. Honestly, what was he thinking with the Death Eaters? It looked like the KKK fell into their own tar and accidentally started waving wands around. He kept Cuaron's vision of Hogwarts but made it look decidedly more normal, and much of the magical/mystical feel was lost. The AJC complemented the flying carriage, the Durmstraug boat, and the Yule Ball decorations as examples of the wonderful visuals. The first two are straight from the book, with almost no imagination required. And I was not that stunned with the decorations. I wasn't expecting Moody to work as well as he did, though, and I had no problems with the Pensieve. The morphing Voldemort did look a bit like Werewolf!Lupin for a second there, though. On the other hand, Baby Voldie was cool.

Script/Adaptation: Once again, much was lost from the book to the movie, mainly the cute little subplots. Fred and George made a major comeback, but Sirius' visits were gone, as was S.P.E.W. (and all mentions of house elves whatsoever), Rita Skeeter being an Animagus, all the classes (minus the plot point Moody one), and my favorite scene from the book when Moody teaches the kids to fend off the Imperius Curse. This movie could not stand on it's own from the books at all, it seemed to me; the others might have been hard to follow without reading the books, but this one left out all sorts of important bits from the book. The dialogue was cringingly bad at a few parts, but there were still some good laughs. My main complaint in ths area is that the beginning was hugely rushed, and I felt like a freight train had picked me up and slammed me into the middle of the book. Not to mention that really weird scene in the bathroom. And anyone who hadn't read the book and therefore knew all the Barty Crouch stuff would have been sooooooo lost.

By the by, Cedric Diggory can be the father of my children if he really wants to be. Oh, and Fred and George can too.

P.S.--I am in no way not recommending the movie. I think that any good HP fan should go see it, and it was certainly not a waste of the money that I didn't pay for it. So go see it, just don't expect it to be the best.
Previous post Next post
Up