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.

Who are fat villains in Dahl? I can think of Aunt Sponge; all the rest (brewer in Danny..., Veruca Salt's parents) seem to be overweight by virtue of epitomizing the wealthy and overfed upper-classes, in contrast to poverty-stricken heroes. But I'm not a Dahl completist.