Harry Potter and the Weird Guy in the Audience

December 2nd, 2005 - 11:34pm

So again we traveled to Knox to see the latest instalment of the Harry Potter movies (this time the director was Mike Newell, the guy who directed Four Weddings and a Funeral).

Justine and I had pretty good seats, and after watching almost 20 minutes of previews the guy next to Justine yelled at the top of his lungs “Get on with it!”. Much of the (almost packed, 600 seat) cinema went quiet and directed their attention to this guy. He stood up and repeated his sentiment, even louder this time.

A few moments later, the on-screen advert stopped, and the “director” of the advert appeared on the screen. The guy next to Justine then proceeded to have a “conversation” with the character on-screen. The “conversation” was something regarding Swinburne University and how they “get on with things” or some such. After the interesting advert, the guy left and Justine now had a vacant seat beside her.

The Potter film is — to my mind — the second best of the ones so far. The best being Prisoner of Azkaban. This one seemed to be all over the place sometimes — not knowing whether to show action, character interrelationships or something else. When it worked well it worked pretty well.

The set pieces and action scenes are obviously not Mike Newell’s forte, and just seemed rather “vanilla” to me. The characters worked quite well together — probably an advantage of having done four movies together now — and I think this was best evidenced in the major “ball” scene, though it was probably a little overdramatic.

So, my order for the best films is Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets. I would say that Azkaban is a “film” (and more of a translation of the book), and the others are “movies” (more of a moving, speaking version of the books).

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