Film - General Release
reviewed by By Mary Hoffman
This is far and away the best Harry Potter film so far. It is the third director, Mike Newall, and he makes the most of the great adult cast and the superb special effects available to him.
Some things are gifts: the fabulous foaming goblet, the amazingly CGI-created Quidditch World Cup stadium, the underwater trial and the shifting maze. Which is not to say that an inferior director wouldn't have loused them up; nothing is filmproof.
Much was made of Alfonso Cuaron having brought out the dark side of Harry Potter in the third film but that darkness was there in the book and owed little to the director of –Y tu Mama Tambien.” I found it disappointing, since I've always thought The Prisoner of Azkaban the best book.
But it's not always the case that the best books make the best films and here the rather run-of-the-mill book four is transformed by a real directorial vision. It helps that we are spared the stereotyped and unvarying Dursleys at the beginning and the Quidditch match itself so that you don't get that repetitive feeling of the first three films.
And no Sorting Hat to underline that another year has passed; that's obvious enough from the fact that the boys and girls of Harry's year at Hogwarts are getting interested in one another. Hormones are kicking in and the main characters are as concerned with how to get a date for the winter ball as with how to eliminate Voldemort.
Snakes get the usual bad press, beginning with one who eats poor old Eric Sykes, who is playing a caretaker. Then one appears out of the mouth of a skull drawn in the sky after the World Cup Final ® the –dark mark” that shows –you-know-who” is back.
Both events are linked to the ubiquitous David Tennant, who is here a hissing tongue-darting renegade son of the Minister of Magic and will be on our TV screens at Christmas as the new Doctor Who. How confusing! Ralph Fiennes undergoes a regeneration just like the Time Lord's, only with more gory preliminaries; I almost expected the new Voldemort to say –hmn, no hair or nose,” when trying out his new face.
The three young actors are the least developed aspect of the film; Daniel Radcliffe hasn't progressed as an actor since The Philosopher's Stone, Rupert Grint mugs and gurns with the most irritating face in contemporary culture and Emma Watson, always too pretty for Hermione, has become overblown without having ever blossomed. But there is something touching about seeing these three grow up through the films just as they are supposed to in the books.
They really are the lanky and awkward teenagers they are supposed to be. You don't get much Draco in this one but have the delightful spectacle of Neville turning out to be a wow as a dancer and not the wallflower you'd expect. He comes home happily in the early hours after the ball, touchingly unable to believe he is up later than Harry and Ron.
There are some less happy aspects ® the dreadful sex-stereotyping of the French girls from Beauxbatons Academy (Fleur is the only contestant to fail a trial and there is a farcical contrast between the silly French girls and the macho shaven-headed Teutons from the Durmstrang Institute), the extraordinary lack of reaction from the girlfriend of the contestant who dies and there is a tacky scene in which ghostly moaning Myrtle tries to get a glimpse of Harry's manhood in a bubble bath.
But the adult actors are as good as ever. Alan Rickman doesn't get much to do but he'll make up for that when they reach film six and space had to be made for Miranda Richardson's hilariously over the top journalist, Rita Skeeter. Even the sweet-trolley-pusher on the train is Margery Mason, a veteran British actress.
There are some great lines in this movie –Love is Old Magic.” (Voldemort) –Personally I've never had much time for heroes” (Dumbledore) and the exchange between Harry and Hermione at the end: –Everything's going to change now, isn't it?” –Yes.”
The pointed hoods at the break up of the World Cup Final are truly sinister and we are a long way away from the funny-flavoured sweets and living portraits of the first book and film. J.K. Rowling and Mike Newall have set everything up for the increasingly –noir” vision of magic that informs the descent of the Harry Potter arc. I hope they keep him on for the last three films.