Thursday, November 17, 2005

Potterized: My Goblet of Fire Rants, er, Review

I just watched GOF yesterday. And to sum it up, yes, it was good, not exactly the best movie in the HP franchise, but still, up to par with HP standards--- that is, up there with WOW! Bloody-brilliant fantastic!

I was fairly disappointed with the technical stuff though. Watching the movie, I couldn't point out what was exactly wrong with it. Bad editing? Direction, perhaps? Whatever it was, the movie felt rushed. Even with over two hours of film-time, you could feel something missing. I know that it would have been impossible to stretch it to four hours (mind you, I wouldn't have any problem with that) but still, they could have done better with it.

They took out a lot of scenes though. I would have loved Hermoine and her SPEW, but I know, it isn't really integral to harry's demise in the movie. And sadly, no Dobby and Winky. I also expected a lot of frenzy over the Tri-Wizard Tournament. It was a bit sad to see it almost as an afterthought.

They could have done better with the riff between Harry and Ron. Let's just say that their fight really didn't register with the audience. Harry should have thrown that pin over Ron's forehead!


And for the shippy side--- a few notes:

a) movie Cho and movie Harry do NOT have chemistry. They looked brother-and-sister to me. And mind you, I wasn't the only one thinking about the lack of sparks. The non-HP people who saw it with me thought so too. I wonder how this plays out in the OOTP movie.

b) the tension between Ron and Hermoine wasnt really there. For a minute, I thought the fight between them in the Yule Ball could pass for a shippy moment , but it fell into more like two siblings fighting over candy (and that's not just my H/Hr bias talking).

c) Yes people. Your eyes do not deceive you. Dan and Emma really do have chemistry. The bridge scene was squee-worthy(not an actual word, but popular shippy parlance nonetheless). Me thinks it really wasn't a Harry-Hermoine thing. More like a Dan-Emma episode, if you ask me. heehee...The Harry-Hermoine scenes were fleeting however. A word of caution: Don't blink too fast. You might miss them. I think a lot of the scenes HP fans have been privy to for the past few months were deleted or 'tamed' because of HBP. It would have been fun to see those deleted scenes though. But the audience consensus that night was: they could still something brewing between Harry and Hermoine. It didn't help that they kept panning Hermoine's face after every tormented-Harry bit to indicate something otherwise, er, platonic.

The film had it's good points. The special effects were fantastic. Voldemort looked sinister. At one point, he looked like Hannibal Lecter. Needless to say, the graveyard scene was spooky. And oh, Cedric was, uhmm, luscious! heehee....