Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was an okay film, but the stress of condensing 700+ pages of story into 2+ hours of movie showed strongly, so the storyline felt a bit rushed, with the sensation that many pieces were missing. [spoilers, highlight to read] We hardly saw Sirius Black outside of a few letters and a 3D fireplace cameo. Cho Chang was relegated to the background, a passing ball proposal added as an afterthought to the owl tower. Draco Malfoy got little screentime beyond his weasel scene with Professor “Moody.” I wondered why the screenplay, with so much cut from the book, actually added to the climactic buildup to Cedric Diggory’s death, having him speak a bit more and pose a bit before being felled by the Avadra Kevadra. One could have shaved precious seconds from that, as well as from various action scenes and Moaning Myrtle’s antics, to better pad more important aspects of the plot, and perhaps move Cedric’s character development to other parts of the story.

Still, the important aspects of Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s tense coming-of-age were explored, and the film just barely managed to maintain its narrative cohesiveness. Nonetheless, I wasn’t as impressed with the HP4 movie; any one of the last three films exceeded this one for overall enjoyability.

I would write more, but I found that Raffy has said everything I was thinking already.