So far not my favorite of the four HP movies I’ve watched, although I didn’t hate it. My one real complaint? New. Dumbledore. Sucks.

Perhaps I should have known. When I heard that the movie studio was going to try to tackle Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I felt that there was no way they could do it justice in 4 hours, much less two.

The Goblet of Fire is my favorite book in the Harry Potter series, it is precisely for this reason that I shoul not have watched the movie. The movie left me in a difficult position, that is, if I hadn’t read the book, I would have been clueless as to what was going on. However because I had read the book, I did not like the movie.

There are many reasons for this but the main one was that the entire movie was viewed from a skewed almost comical point of view. As if I had arrived at an odd circus of wizardry and now it was time to laugh at the fools. There were, of course, portions of the book missing, but I can’t fault it too much for that due to time constraints. Still I wonder why they introduced Rita Skeeter if they weren’t going to follow through on her.

The Mad-eye Moody (One of the best characters in the series) looking in the mirror scene was laughable. I don’t think he belted out a, “Constant vigilance!”, during the entire movie.

You really couldn’t tell what the hell happened to Barty Crouch in the end, or why he was in the movie at all.

Where is Pigwidgeon? Why is Sirus’ face made of glowing coals when it was supposed to appear in the fire?

There were a couple points of the movie that I did enjoy dispite all this. The Tri-wizard tournament itself was done fairly well. And they did a decent job of portraying He-who-must-not-be-named.

All in all, it was a difficult task to translate the book to a normal length movie. They really shouldn’t have tried. Since they did, it should have come with a warning for those who really liked the book not to watch it. But in that, I should have known better. Because when was the last time a favorite book made a favorable transition to the silver screen?