The safety spells were off for every trial, though. Assuming they never go off campus (do they not, in the book?) it seems that Crouch could have impersonated anyone, got close to him before they even started school, and if not, just make a dragon's egg a portkey and boom!

It seemed way too convoluted as a film's plot.

It seemed way too convoluted as a film's plot.

We just got back from the movie, and I have to agree. I enjoyed it, no question, but it's been a while since I read the book. Except...I don't remember the book's plot pinging me as absurd or too convoluted. I think something got lost in the translation here, because I too walked away thinking, If it was Crouch Jr. the whole time, surely all that was unnecessary?

I mean, I read Nilly's explanation, too, which makes sense, but they clearly didn't explain some things in the movie.

I agree, for a movie plot. I think this movie was very dependent on the book and really didn't work as a stand alone piece, but I'm okay with that.

YokayMV

I think it may have had something to do with getting Harry alone so that Dumbledore wouldn't suspect he'd been Portkeyed off.

I think the movies should absolutely be able to stand alone from the books as a cohesive onscreen unit. Even if it takes director's cuts to do it.

Dumbledore wouldn't suspect he'd been Portkeyed off.

Seeing as they never planned on returning him, it didn't seem a large concern.

Except that they had to ensure that there was enought TIME to do the spell AND kill Harry without anyone noticing him missing from class or whatever.

I haven't gotten the sense from the books that there's any way to trace portkeys, so I'm not sure there's much in the way of time constraints. On the whole, though, I found it a ridiculously convoluted plot in the book, so I wasn't surprised to find it so in the movie.

I think I've mentioned this before, but a recent NY Times article reminded me:

In the pre-Potter days, would an American publisher have brought out "The Water Mirror"? Hard to say, but Kai Meyer's very European fantasy, translated gracefully from German by Elizabeth D. Crawford, brings a refreshing, and occasionally jarring, perspective to New World readers.

No American children's book would take such a derogatory view of fat people, for example. In "The Water Mirror," fat characters are baddies and thinness is usually a sign of virtue.

This always throws me in the Harry Potter and Roald Dahl's books. Wish Fay would drop by to comment or get a little Brit-perspective on it.

I recall being rather nonplussed by the book Fattypuffs and Thinifers [link] (which is not particularly flattering to either, really) when I read it as a kid. But I guess it was by a Frenchman, now that I look at it. Andre Maurois, who knew?

Andre Maurois, who knew?

They're sneaky, those French.