Harry Potter and the Curate's Egg of Fire

 

Well, in the words of the famous curate, parts of it were excellent.

Here be spoilers – highlight below to read on …

The quidditch world cup, the dragon, the band playing at the Yule Ball, Barty Crouch Jr, Mad Eye Moody, Voldemort and the final denoument were all well crafted bits of cinema, but even excising a good third of the book still doesn’t make what plot there is make any sense whatsoever. To cut to the chase :

• How did Barty Jr keep up the act for an entire year? How much potion would he have needed if he was swigging it every couple of minutes?
• Why doesn’t Dumbledore see through the polyjuice potion at any point?
• If wizards under 17 are forbidden from competing in the tournament, why is Barty Crouch happy for Harry to take part given the risk to his life? Couldn’t Dumbledore just have forbidden him to take part and made Harry retire from each event before he got into danger?
• Would Dumbledore have let the children in the lake drown if they hadn’t been rescued in time?
• The whole tournament is an elaborate wheeze to get Harry to touch the cup, which assumes that he is going to win and he isn’t going to get killed at any point.
• If Harry needs to survive, why does Krum try to kill him in the maze?
• If all Voldemort needs is Harry’s blood, why doesn’t Barty just kidnap him or give him an old boot portkey or just stab him during a private lesson or something?
• It’s implied that nobody believes that Harry actually saw Voldemort – why don’t they just extract his memory using the pensieve thingy?

Oh well, at least the kids enjoyed it, although I think some of the tinies in the audience will be having nightmares tonight …