(*: least, *****: highest)
The Dark Lord rises… Harry Potter’s fourth year at Hogwards turns out to be the year of the rebirth of the one who must not be named. The movie’s special effects are unbelieveable and why not its one of the costliest movies ever made (at a staggering 330 million $).
Harry’s fourth year is almost entirely about the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, in which student representatives from three different wizarding schools compete in a series of increasingly challenging contests. However, Voldemort’s Death Eaters are gaining strength and even creating the Dark Mark giving evidence that the Dark Lord is ready to rise again…
The movie tries its best to match the book and falls short(dont all book based movies). The sad part is how short it ends up falling. Personally I felt the movie was disappointing but to look at it in a point of view of the screenplay writer… a 600 odd page novel(no dragging in the novel so almost every page added to the story perfectly) had to be made into a movie around 150 mins long. The movie by itself is good… a few of my friends who have not read the book but watched the movie loved it.
Emma Watson is gorgeous and Ruphet Grint is hillarious as Ron. Daniel Radcliffe is frankly getting older(thru no mistake of his I must add) but he again does a great job as Harry Potter. His scene with Cho Chung when he askes her to the ball is one of the best moments in the young boy’s acting career. The comedy in the movie stands out on its own(some of it not from the book), this pleasently surprised me. The sequence with Lord Voldemort’s rebirth is right from the book and spectacular.
Characters like the two house elfs are totally missing in the flick. Bagman and Crouch atleast get a couple of seconds of screen time. Krum, Cedric and Cho Chung look a lot different than their description in the book (their behaviour has been modified too to suit the movie). The biggest shock is Sirus Black is absolutely missing and the one that hurt the most(to me) there were no Veelas :( and the whole Qudditch World Cup has been skipped.
All in all, I would rather read the book again than watch the movie but thats just my opinion… As an old saying goes:
Dont judge the book by the movie