Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This is where the series picks up. The kids have become half adults, things are about to get serious, and it is the first of the films to be rated PG-13. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is good overall, and its cast is top notch. But too many of its interactions are never earned.

Hogwarts is hosting the Triwizard Tournament, which brings together three schools, with the Goblet of Fire choosing one champion from each. Then a fourth name comes out: Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), who is fourteen, three years under the age limit, and swears he never entered. The Goblet counts as a binding magical contract, so he cannot back out. A new Defence teacher, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody (Brendan Gleeson), arrives in a thunderclap. Many of the students do not believe Harry. More painfully, neither does Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint).

The Quidditch World Cup and the Ministry

The film opens on Harry's nightmare at the Riddle House. Then it does something this series does well: it shows you another part of how wizards actually live. This time it is the Quidditch World Cup. There is a campsite the size of a town, a tent that turns out to be a flat on the inside, and an old boot in a field that turns out to be a Portkey. It is there to make you curious about everything else going on out there, and it works.

You also get to see how the wizarding world is run. Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) is Minister for Magic. Bartemius Crouch (Roger Lloyd-Pack) heads the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Aurors are explained as dark wizard catchers. There is a hierarchy, there are orders, and there is an international side to all of it.

And it never goes plain. Whenever the story is not moving forward, the film puts something in anyway: another piece of how this world works, or something funny.

The comedy and the Yule Ball

The fun bits are there, even if not all of them are strong. Rubeus Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) stands on the grounds with signalling wands, waving the Beauxbatons carriage down out of the sky, and gets knocked flat when it lands. Argus Filch (David Bradley) comes running up the Great Hall to interrupt a speech by Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). Later, Hagrid is so busy staring at Madame Olympe Maxime (Frances de la Tour) that he plants his fork straight into the hand of Filius Flitwick (Warwick Davis). It is a throwaway joke, and a very funny one. Maxime calls the headmaster Dumbly-dorr, and her romance with Hagrid stays cute all the way to the Yule Ball.

Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith) has a sense of humour, and the film proves it. Teaching Gryffindor to dance, she warns them not to spend the evening behaving like a babbling, bumbling band of baboons. That line is the high point of the comedy, in this film and in the series. Then she picks Ron out of the whole room to demonstrate the waltz. Even her ordinary reactions, the concern and the alarm, play funny from the outside.

There is more. Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) tells Ron to get dressed and not go back to sleep. When he points out that she is a girl, she tells him it is very well spotted. And twice, Filch fires the starting cannon before Dumbledore can finish announcing the task. It is a running joke, and it lands both times.

Alan Rickman as Severus Snape

Watch Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) in the study hall and he barely says a word. He collects Hermione's work, pushes Harry's and Ron's heads down onto the desk, and walks on. Every movement is so clipped and deliberate that it looks almost robotic, and the scene gets funnier once you stop watching the boys and start watching him. You might not notice it the first time. On a rewatch you see how carefully Rickman has built this. He is in a class of his own.

He is funny when he talks, too. Cornering Harry about stolen potion ingredients, boomslang skin and lacewing flies, the makings of Polyjuice Potion, he threatens to slip a truth potion into Harry's pumpkin juice. Then he shuts the door in his face.

Beauxbatons, Durmstrang and Hogwarts

The two visiting schools are exact opposites and nothing else. The film presents Beauxbatons, from France, as ultra-feminine: an all-female delegation of silk, butterflies and synchronised cartwheels. Durmstrang, from somewhere up north, is its ultra-masculine opposite: boys in fur cloaks, carrying staffs and spitting fire into the air, as though they have come to burn the place down. It is silly, and it is funny. In the novel both schools take boys and girls, so the film chose this.

Against them, Hogwarts has no personality at all. It did not have to be that way. An April 2004 draft of Steve Kloves's screenplay gave the school a reply, with the whole student body singing its anthem back at the visitors. The finished film drops that reply. The anthem survives only as a snatch of song much later, in a scene that has nothing to do with the visitors, so when it matters, Hogwarts stands there with nothing to say for itself.