Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I have been meaning to write about the new Harry Potter movie since the day it came out, but I wanted to give the viewing a second thought (and subsequent third and fourth thoughts) because my initial opinion was that the movie disappointed. There were 4 less Weasleys than there should have been, no Veela, no S.P.E.W., no Winky or Dobby, 1 scene with Sirius (and he was only in the fire), no Dursleys, no Ludo Bagman, and the list goes on.

The book was very long and I do understand that in order to make it work as a film they had to cut alot of things out. The problem was that the movie just felt a little choppy because of all of the things that were missing. I do understand that there are certain time constraints, but these books build upon one another so if you cut things or characters out of this movie then you'll have to cut subsequent plot points out of future films. It would have worked better as 2 movies.

Also, my friend Kat and I are having an ongoing discussion about the length of time between the movies which is generally 2 years. These kids are already looking older than their characters so in my opinion they need to speed up the movie making in order to keep it believable (seriously, in 1 scene I turned to Kat and said, "Dude, Ron Weasley is buff"....so wrong. Ron Weasley is NOT supposed to be buff).

That said, the movie highlighted mainly the events during the tournament. And they did a great job of that. I did jump a couple of times and I found myself cringing. It just was not what I expected. Books will always be better than movies, but I just expected more.