Yes, it’s smashing magical goodness.

Go and see it, though not if you have already read the book 8 times, and will wince inwardly when the film omits a plot-point—because the film cuts out a lot. And because really, that’s no way to enjoy a film.

Basically the story this year at the magical Mallory Towers is that the Tri-Wizard Tournament is being held at Hogwarts. It’s a game of danger and skill and 3 magical trials, played by 3 randomly selected participants from 3 magical schools. (The 3 schools being Hogwarts, a French lot and a school from Bulgaria.) Strangely (though not surprisingly), Harry Potter becomes selected, magically, in addition to the 3 formal contenders. Equally unsurprisingly, his schoolmates turn against the righteous little git. Anyway, I give nothing away by telling you that he completes the three tasks and beats all the other contenders. (I spoil the story for real in the next paragraph.) Predictably everybody loves little Harry Potter by the end.

Aye, it turns out that the magical cup which is the prize, is really a ‘port-key’, a portal to another place, in this case the cemetary-lair of arch-villain Voldemort (whose name is an anagram of I Am Really Evil and Old), who plans to kill Harry and rule the Galaxy in his place. Or something. In this scene, apart from revealing his evil plot and telling of his plan to slowly torture Potter to death, Voldemort casually dispatches Cedric Diggory, (who really has a hard time of it in this story, not least by dying at the end).

The film works well and I enjoyed it much more than the book, this time. When reading the book, the ending seemed tacked-on, and gratuitously nasty, as if J.K. Rowling had been having a particularly bad week at work and decided on a whim, and with a magical wave of her wordprocessor, to take it all out on Harry and poor Cedric Diggory.

The film version leads up to the ending a lot more smoothly. The last act really cranks up the sinister atmosphere—the maze especially, with its misty passages and aggressive privet—so it feels like only a matter of time before something pops (and of course that turns out to be Cedric).

Also, the fact that the film pares down a lot of the book, pruning extraneous subplots with extraordinarily zeal, makes the central plot, the story of the Tri-Wizard Tournament build better and build to a more satisfying climax. Some bits work particularly well on film too, as when Harry returns with a dead Diggory, and the school crowds are all mobbing and cheering and the band strikes up, before they realise what has happened.

When reading the book, I never bought Mad-Eye’s betrayal. (In fact I still don’t get why his plan to entrap Harry was quite so convoluted, but such often is the way with film villainy.) Mad-Eye’s duplicitousness, for me, reads more convincingly in the film version.

The first act, unfortunately, featuring the Quidditch World Cup, is rushed, over-edited and feels almost like one of these ‘in last week’s episode’ montages from the beginning of a double-episode of The A Team. They perhaps should just have cut the World Cup bit completely, because you never get to see any of the match. Or made it into a separate film. Maybe it will make its way onto the DVD extras.

The only other major impression I had of the film was how hammy Michael Gambon was. I don’t remember him being like that in The Prisoner of Azkaban, but this time round he’s forever falling around, and shaking Harry, and generally chewing scenery. Very undignified. How very unlike the home life of our own dear Dumbledore.

Anyway, decent film from a book which could have easily covered 2 films (or, as in yester-year, a 10-part special BBC adaptation with very good special effects in episode 1, and increasing shoddy production values by the last episode). Since the books keep getting longer, I fully expect the film of Order of The Phoenix to miss out 90% of the plot and run for 41⁄2 hours.