Director Mike Newell has crafted a film full of images that are vast and wondrous, but strangely detached and obviously artificial, similar to the look of the "Lord of the Rings" movies. You can appreciate the enormity of the visuals, but they seem so distant, it's difficult to feel engaged by them.

Newell (working from a script by Steve Kloves, who has adapted all of Rowling's books and had his work cut out for him with the 734-page "Goblet of Fire") seems less interested in the whimsical magicality of Hogwarts' halls — thankfully, since we're all over the moving staircases and talking portraits by now — and focuses more on Harry and his friends as they come of age.

"Goblet of Fire" is more effective in these smaller, more intimate moments than in the bloated bombast of its larger set pieces. One of Newell's best-known and loved films is "Four Weddings and a Funeral," and he applies that same keen sense of romantic comedy timing here.

Confession: the juvenilia and wizard bling of the first two Potter movies left me cold. Whatever magic author J.K. Rowling worked on the page evaporated onscreen.

Newell also does the action proud, staging an exciting Triwizard Tournament and an underwater chase involving evil spirits. Scariest of all is Ralph Fiennes doing his Red Dragon stare as Lord Voldemort, the fiend who killed Harry's parents. Freud would have loved this Goblet. With the cast getting looser and the mind games kinkier, it's hard to resist.