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Goblet of Fire Media Reviews
There's a delicious chill in the air at Hogwarts this semester. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" is the darkest, most thrilling entry yet in the movie franchise based on novelist J.K. Rowling's magical creation - the boy wizard from whom so much is expected.
In his fourth year at Hogwarts, a time when Nazi-like "Death Eaters" are on the march, Harry is forced to fight gladiator-style in a deadly intramural competition, the Triwizard Tournament. A dragon breathes fire down his neck while a dragon of a different sort - the evil, presumably vanquished Lord Voldemort - makes Harry's lightning-shaped scar pulse with foreboding.
There's plenty of humor, but the primary mood in "Goblet" is one of terror, with a dense, intense story and dazzling action sequences - an airborne dragon fight, an eerie underwater rescue. Just as Harry has grown, the series has graduated to a PG-13 rating, one that parents should heed - this movie is giving me nightmares.
There's something else bothering Harry and his pals Ron and Hermione, something more unpredictable than shape-shifting mazes, possibly more frightening than the resurrection of He Who Shall Not Be Named: The stirrings of puberty.
That's some serious magic.
The power of hormones is pretty clear. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione) look mighty mature for 14-year-olds. Grint's growth spurt will have him towering over the giant Hagrid pretty soon - he's already speaking in a manly rumble that threatens to crack the school's foundations.
Meanwhile, Hermione puts the boing back in bookworm.
Expertly directed by Mike Newell, this "Harry" is a worthy successor to last year's installment by Alfonso Cuarón. "Goblet" shifts effortlessly from dark to light to dark again. Ralph Fiennes plays a newly invigorated but nostril-challenged Voldemort, and Gary Oldman's face appears in the ferocious embers of a fire as Harry's confidant Sirius Black.
Even the light is a bit dark. Harry gets his best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher yet - Alastor (Mad Eye) Moody, played by a fabulously cranky Brendan Gleeson with a scowl for the record books and a fake eyeball that rolls restlessly like a dog pulling at its master's leash.
Just when things are looking mighty hairy for Harry, the movie takes a comic breather in the trenches of young love. Harry is poetry in motion on the Quidditch field, but when the girl he likes catches his eye, he does a spit-take worthy of the Three Stooges.
The simple act of asking a girl to the school dance causes sweat to pool and friendships to rupture. Director Newell decorates the Hogwarts Yule Ball with the romantic-comedy tinsel he perfected in "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
There are also some wonderful bits with Miranda Richardson as a purring gossip columnist with a poison pen, and the usual delightful crew of Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith and Robbie Coltrane.
Rowling's books have kept pace with Harry's journey from an adorable, misunderstood orphan with special abilities to a teenager who feels the heavy burden his abilities entail. Hogwarts teaches magic, but the aim of the curriculum - and the books, and the movies - is to teach young minds how to wield knowledge and power responsibly.
As the wise headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) says, life is "a choice between what is right and what is easy." This new Harry Potter movie makes things right, even if - as Harry and pals nervously acknowledge at the end - everything will be different from now on.
 
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