As Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) enter their fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, sinister plots conspire to bring about the end of the world as they know it. Harry is having dreams about Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), the sinister figure who killed his parents, and, when Harry's name is mysteriously entered into the prestigious Tri-Wizard Tournament, he suspects foulplay. Quite apart from these dastardly deeds, he has another, even more pressing problem to deal with: that of adolescence.
Since shouldering the bulk of DVD Times' high definition coverage, at least for the time being, I have been finding myself more and more often preceding my reviews with "I'm not a fan of...
" disclaimers, given that the rather paltry number of titles available has led to me reviewing films I wouldn't otherwise have covered. So here we go with another: I'm not a fan of the Harry Potter series, and although I had eventually seen all of the film adaptations released thus far (be it on DVD or on television), I must confess to not having read any of J.K.
Rowling's novels, unless skimming the first 30 pages of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in a library counts. As such, I have never been swept up in the fervour surrounding these films that has affected so many cinemagoers. I would, ultimately, class them a notch or two below Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, the release of the first installment of which followed that of the first Harry Potter film by just over a month.
I am, as it happens, a strong follower of J.R.R.
Tolkien's mythology, and my lukewarm but fairly favourable reaction to Jackson's interpretation of that work may be something of an indicator as to how I would have reacted to the Harry Potter films had I been an ardent supporter of their literary variants. Then again, Rowling has had a virtually unprecedented level of creative control over the adaptation of her work, something denied to the Tolkien estate given that the rights to The Lord of the Rings were auctioned off for a pittance in the early 1970s. Then again, whereas my main criticism of the Lord of the Rings films was Jackson's mishandling of the thematic material (not to mention his often baffling editorial decisions and relegating of important characters to mere comic relief roles), one of the complaints more commonly leveled against the Harry Potter films is that they are too faithful to their sources, a decision that at times results in a feeling that we are simply being strung along through one ridiculously long movie split into seven parts.
As such, while they include plenty of crowd-pleasing visual spectacles, like the Quidditch World Cup or Harry's encounter with the Horntail, they are remarkably unfulfilling, building towards a big climax that, due to the length of the series, often feels simply too far off to matter in the short term. This is especially true of this fourth entry, which ends not so much with a grand climax but rather with a couple of minor victories and setbacks, and a promise that the impending doom will be dealt with during the next school term (i.e.
in the next film). This format generally works well enough for episodic television, where the next installment is only ever a week or, at the end of a season, a few months away, but for a series of films that will not be completed until 2010 (a total of nine years), the lack of a true conclusion at the end of this installment is rather annoying. In many ways, though, this is the best in the series so far.
As both the characters and the actors playing them have grown up, the films have matured and grown darker in tone, while the performances have become more assured and the thematic material more potent. The name of the game this year is teenage angst, as Harry and his friends turn into moody, hormonal adolescents. On paper, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, but in reality it allows the actors to flex their muscles and take their characters to new places.
The Yule Ball sequence, which falls at around the film's mid-point and features by far the most angst and sniping, does run on for a little too long, and contains a decidedly painful musical cameo from members of Radiohead and Pulp, but for the most part screenwriter Steve Kloves, who has adapted all of the Harry Potter films to date, does a fine job of entwining the character development with the central plot. Indeed, Kloves deserves considerable praise for condensing Rowling's weighty 650-page tome into a still-lengthy but (given the length of the Lord of the Rings adaptations) manageable 157 minutes. Especially during the first act, he wields his editor's scissors mercilessly, compressing the opening material featuring the Quidditch World Cup, which I am led to believe constitutes at least 150 pages of the novel, into a sprightly 15 minutes.
Even so, the sheer scale of the piece is still rather intimidating: 25 stars listed in principal credits, and many more play important parts. Established actors like Robbie Coltrane and Miranda Richardson pop up for a couple of minutes at a time, giving the impression of a world populated by a diverse cast of characters, but who are at the same time all crying for attention. In the context of the novel, which was long enough to give them room to breathe, this was probably less of an issue, but on the screen, the sprightly pace gives them little time with which to make their mark.
Not having read the books, I have no idea if Richardson's tabloid reporter Rita Skeeter plays any part in future installments, but, if not, then her inclusion here seems rather pointless, as her brief sequence doesn't really lead anywhere. What holds it all together, though, is the direction by Mike Newell, which is decidedly assured.
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