Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Golly Great Goblets of Galloping Goodness

I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire twice in two consecutive days, the first time I've ever done so for any movie. The only other movie I watched more than once in a cinema was Shrek 2, I think. My dad got free tickets as part of his company's family day thingamajig, so I watched GoF for the first time on Sunday with my family. It wasn't exactly the best movie-watching experience because there were many screaming (or just really noisy) children, it being a family day event after all - there was this really really annoying girl who kept counting out loudly, very loudly, behind me, during the graveyard scene, and it nearly drove me mad. Second-time watching was yesterday evening with Hope, Wee Ming, Darryl and Jon Chia, which was comparably a lot better, because the audience got a lot more of the jokes, and it's easier to enjoy the movie when you're watching it with people who can appreciate the subtleties.

I had better put a spoiler alert here. Do not cross if you don't want to be spoilt for GoF!

[spoilers]

Watching the movie two times is great because I caught more stuff than I did the first time. I'm kind of reluctant to say this, but sometimes the British accent is so thick and the speech so soft that I can hardly decipher what the characters are saying, and it's very easy to miss the conversation, so you roughly know what's going on but can't really appreciate the dialogue, which is very vexing. And of course I get to drool over the brilliant Robert Pattison i.e. Cedric Diggory more. I'm going to watch it a third time with ZF when he comes back from the U.K., and I'm actually looking forward to that. Maybe we could even watch the IMAX version, oh glee.

Story-wise I didn't think it was very good after the first watching, because I just can't really see past all the changes they made to the original story, but after the second time I started to appreciate the flow. The biggest question that keeps bugging me is whether or not people who haven't read the book can understand what really is going on, because the more significant scenes are kind of blink-and-you-miss-it. Then again it's kind of like reading the book for the first time, you won't know what's really going on until you hit the end, and then read it all over again. What I really disliked about the way they changed the story was how the audience got to see Barty Crouch Junior from the very beginning of the movie, which I think kind of kinks the story rather badly. Because then Harry recognises him in the Pensieve, and I find it totally illogical that Dumbledore would not have got a little spark of insight after Harry tells him he saw Crouch Jr. in his dream. Like duh.

In terms of the dialogue I was completely in love with the little quirks of language that were all over the movie. The amount of alliteration was quite amusing if anyone even spots it. Besides the obvious "bumbling babbling bunch of baboons" that McGonagall says, Dumbledore also calls the Triwizard Cup a "cup of champions" and "vessel of victory". I don't know whether to be secretly amused or to cringe. And the innuendo! Okay so it's a movie where the protagonists are undergoing puberty, and perhaps I was reading a little too much into stuff, but innuendo is fun. Especially when Cedric suggests to Harry that the Prefect's bathroom might be a good place to take a bath *winkwinknudgenudge*. I was giggling so much it was rather disturbing for people beside me. And the shower scene was so funny too, Moaning Myrtle was such a hoot being perv.

What's a good movie without good actors/actresses and good-looking actors/actresses? What would GoF be without Cedric Diggory? He is seriously so so cute, and it's great that he managed to stay true to the honest and kind Cedric of the book. I think the most heartbreaking scene in the movie is not when he gets killed but when Harry returns with his body and refuses to let go, and Amos Diggory cries. Oh, the sadness.

I think the most understated characters in the movie have to be Ginny and Neville. Ginny has a cool grace that makes her seem older than the main characters, though she's one year younger, and of course she's pretty. And Neville was so brilliant I totally loved the way his character had so much to show and didn't get pushed into a corner. The scene where he was standing in the lake looking at plants and absently waved his hand in a big arc when he saw Hermione, Ron and Ginny coming, that was so Neville it was cute. And the dance. And "OMG I killed Harry Potter!". And seeing him when Moody did the Cruciatus curse on the spider, that was the other heartbreaking scene in the movie. I kind of wish they had developed the point about his parents being tortured by Death Eaters instead of just giving it a bit mention, because it explains so much. I totally love Neville (see, I don't only love pretty people).

Mad-Eye Moody was pretty good, though I thought the scene where he turns Draco into a ferret was a little strange, because he was acting like a kid, and I would never imagine Moody acting like that. I think he would be more quietly menacing, instead of chasing Draco around the tree and sticking his tongue out at McGonagall's back; those actions take a little of the mickey out of his character, and it was just weird. On the second watching I noticed how his tongue starts darting out just before he drinks from his hip-flask - it's subtle and clever.

Hmm, why did it take me three paragraphs to get to the main characters? Daniel did a pretty good job as Harry, I think. Another of those scenes where I was uncomfortable with was the one back in the Gryffindor main hall after the first task, where he acts like some over-pompous hero and keeps asking "Do you want me to open it?", because I think that's not something he would do. Haha me and all my little "That's not something he/she would do!" exclamations get annoying after a while. Ron and Hermione were great too, of course, but I thought Hermione was kind of excessively snappy with Ron after the ball, which I didn't understand until I realised they're all supposed to be 14, and being angsty and emotional is natural, but still it was weird.

Of course Fred and George were one of the highlights in terms of characters, they're so wackily funny. Snape was brilliant as usual, even though he didn't have any lines in the show (Which makes him seem like more of a good guy in this movie, which is excellent, because I'm a Snape supporter). McGonagall is also really good, especially in the amazing bouncing ferret scene and the one where she pleads with Dumbledore to take Harry out of the tournament (actually those are mostly her main scenes, what am I saying).

I really can't stand Dumbledore in this film, because I find that Michael Gambon just doesn't express enough of what I think Dumbledore is. Firstly he seems too tired, is breathless half the time, and has no humour, while Dumbledore is obviously quite a lively and humorous headmaster. And I definitely don't think Dumbledore would rush up to Harry and push him backwards while asking if he put his name in the cup. Dumbledore would definitely not manhandle his students like that. Absolutely appalling. Of course it's not easy playing someone like Dumbledore, but his performance is really quite disappointing.

Oh yes, how could I forget Voldemort. I was rather expecting him to be scary, but Ralph Fiennes didn't really seem very scary. He has great scene presence though, and he was practically gliding around the graveyard as Voldemort, which is very very good. After a while I realised that perhaps Voldy isn't supposed to be scary in a literal manner, but more menacing, more dark steel hidden under a veneer of finesse and grace, which Fiennes portrays really well. I thought his eyes are supposed to be red, though. Yes, I'm totally obsessed with minor deviations from the story. And Wormtail, he seems too confident and assertive in the movie, especially when you consider that in the book he was all cowardly and snivelling all the time. Oh well.

All in all it was a pretty entertaining movie, if not purely due to the story, because naturally squeezing a huge book like GoF into a two-and-a-half hour show is quite a feat in itself, and the book will surely be more interesting. But it's good that the director threw in plenty of fun stuff for the people who've already read the book.

[/spoilers]

As a totally unrelated note, Steven Chia is back on PTM! I am such a happy PTM fan now.

Avaris / 11/22/2005 09:08:00 PM

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