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HARRY POTTER REVIEWED

The fourth installment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, should do gangbusters business at the box office -- that pretty much goes without saying, even though I just said it. My first impression was good, although I wasn't sure it measured up to the third movie. Then I saw "Azkaban" again this week on HBO, and I started to change my mind. Mike Newell did a great job on this film. The Brit puts more of that trademark Brit humor into the story, to an extent that it's surprising how funny the movie is when everything else about the plot is so, so doom and gloom. Perhaps that's why you needed the funny. Regardless, it's worth looking back at all four Harry Potter flicks to see how they fare in comparison to the books.

Directors bring own magic to Potter films (Boston Herald)
With each successive Harry Potter movie, it seems Hollywood and its directors are finding new and inventive ways to make J.K. Rowling’s books come alive on the big screen.
All four film adaptations come from Rowling’s source material and screenplays by Steven Kloves. Yet three different directors have chosen increasingly more creative interpretations of those words - capped by the debut of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
In the first two installments, director Chris Columbus played it so by-the-book that fans not only could count on seeing everything they’d read in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but they also could follow along with their books if they cared to do so.
Those films moved glacially.
For Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, director Alfonso Cuaron finally found the fantasy in the wizard’s world.
Scenes in both Muggle Britain and Hogwarts Britain captured the otherworldly quality of Harry’s life, while at the same time recognizing that you didn’t need to stop the movie every time something magical happened.
Cuaron breezed through the first 30 pages of Rowling’s text in five minutes. He later cut nonessential characters and scenes.
But he also added a sense of dark whimsy that enhanced audience enjoyment of the film without detracting from the plot.
In Goblet of Fire, director Mike Newell had his hands full condensing Rowling’s bloated 734-page book and Kloves’ screenplay into 2 hours.
Newell’s choices, though, make perfect sense.
Do we really need to see the Dursleys again? Or any Muggles, for that matter? Do we really need to see another Quidditch match? Does it matter who wins?
And do we really need to be reminded of house elves such as Dobby (Rowling’s insufferable version of Jar Jar Binks)?
No, no - five times no.
Instead, Newell builds upon Cuaron’s creative vision and focuses on the most essential parts of the book - the Triwizard Tournament and the impending rise of Lord Voldemort.
Newell’s adaptation is dark and foreboding throughout, although he imbues the film with even more cheeky British humor and nods to thecoming-of-age for Harry, Ron and Hermione. Thus, the Beauxbatons become an all-girls legion and the Durmstrang gang all boys, giving them more surprising and entrancing entrances to the picture.
And the film gets its most mischievous fun out of the Weasley twins, Fred and George, in a way that Rowling never could produce with her adverb-laden dialogue.