Goblet of Fire

We went to the movie this afternoon. We took Keithen along with us. It is long, dark and intense. Absolutely deserving of the PG-13 rating. I would definately not take a child under 13 who hasn't read/been read the books. A child who is really familiar with the story might be able to handle it with good preparation for it.

Keithen did fine with it. He hid his eyes at the end of the second task for a second. During the third task, in the maze, he seemed a little concerned and decided to sit in my lap. I reminded him, "Harry wins...he gets out OK" a couple of times and then he seemed fine. (We had told him before the movie that we could leave if he got too scared at any part.)

SPOILER parts ahead.....
if you don't want to hear about the actual movie, skip the next part!

I was a bit disappointed in the first 30 minutes or so of the movie. They raced through the first part. There were a few things that were changed and several things that were skipped over entirely. The Dursley's don't even appear in this movie! It starts at the Burrow with the kids and Mr. Weasly leaving for the Quidditch World Cup. I wish there had been more of the World Cup shown when they got there too. I spent the first half hour or so thinking, "I hope this gets better and they stop skipping so much stuff!"

Once they got to Mad Eye Moody's first Dark Arts class, I started to enjoy the movie a lot more. Brendan Gleeson was great as Moody. Loved the scene in the courtyard with Draco. Watching Neville while Moody demonstrated the 3 unforgiveable curses was so difficult. That was actually the hardest part of the movie for me, knowing how the story turns out. I felt so sorry for poor Neville!

There were a few more annoying changes in some things throughout the rest of it (Ron knew about the dragons!? Where were all the house elfs? Entire characters cut from the story? They left out Dumbledore telling Snape, "you know what I must ask you to do" at the end, which turns out to be very important in book 6!) but I was at least into the movie more from the DA class onwards.

The dragons were amazing. The underwater scenes were good. The maze was a bit disappointing for me (where were all the creatures?!) but the graveyard was great.

Ralph Fiennes was a perfect choice for Lord Voldemort. They couldn't have picked a better actor for the role. I don't know if they used makeup on him or if it was computer imaging but he was appropriately creapy looking! (And totally unrecognizable.)

The kids have all grown wonderfully with their characters and have such good chemistry with each other. I can't wait to see them establish Dumbledore's Army in the next movie. Those scenes are going to be great because Rupert, Daniel and Emma are so good together.

All in all, I'd give it a "thumbs up" but caution the die-hard fans out there that someone took a lot of time hacking things out in order to keep the movie under 3 hours. (Very disappointed that we didn't get to see Dobby's funny socks, LOL!)