Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint
Directed by Mike Newell & written for the screen by Steve Kloves, from the novel by J.K. Rowling
2005
157 min PG13
You may have heard that the new “Harry Potter” is the darkest film in the series yet. You don’t know how right you are. “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” is the darkest movie imaginable. It is so dark that light cannot escape from it. It is so dark that we could see a cloud of all-consuming blackness hovering over the Cinemark as we drove to it. Line after line of little Potter fans stood forlornly in ebony funereal garb, waiting to enter the theater. Children who had just finished the previous showing were stumbling out, blindly, their pupils dilated and their little faces streaked with tears. The lucky ones clutched to their mothers, who all looked years older than when they had entered. The unlucky ones formed a mob around us like beggars in Calcutta, crying out in wordless desperation for some piece of their childhood that they never knew they had until it was so mercilessly rent from them.
Cinemark employees begged us not to buy our tickets. Down on their knees they begged for our sake. The ticket guy said he couldn’t tear any more tickets. He wept before his manager, who tried to comfort him as best she could. But even with her years of lobby experience she, too, was visibly shaken. Our tickets were torn. “Theater 2,” the guy said. “And may God go with you.”
We sat down. There were no previews. Apparently the distributor had decided that the merest glimpse of even the slightest whimsy before the overwhelming despondency which is “The Goblet of Fire” would only make the experience that much more devastating. Previews would be like dangling lollipops over the residents of Auschwitz.
The movie started. The camera rolled and the screen sucked the little floor lights right out of the auditorium. The very canvas itself seemed to shake with the sadness of a million bad blind dates. Anyone who left his cell phone on could no longer find it. Sobs came from all around us. After the opening titles the couple next to us took sleeping pills because they knew that whatever nightmares haunted them in their oncoming stupor, it could not match the awesome terror of the images from which they had just saved themselves. If “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” were a chocolate bar it would be so bitter you’d spit it out. If “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” was 140 minutes of sitting in a completely lightless theater it still couldn’t be as dark as it really is.
Now we, the ragged survivors of that fateful 9:40 showing, stumble in life without meaning. We have sought counseling. We have tried religion. We have tried community service. To no avail. My wife has left me to seek answers on her own. I’ve found my answers at the bottom of a bottle. I can’t sleep and, when I do, it’s only during the day. I cut myself sometimes. The cats try to cheer me up, nuzzling their little wet noses against me, but it’s no good. I am a shell of the man I once was. I envy the dead.
And that’s how dark the new “Harry Potter” is.
Finished Friday, November 18th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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