The HP movies continue to wow and amaze me. As they progress, they’re getting darker and more adult, much like Harry Potter himself. In the beginning, they felt more like kids’ movies that adults could enjoy, and now the tables have been turned a bit.

This fourth movie covers Harry’s fourth year at Hogwarts. The Goblet of the title is a magical urn that spits out the names of three contestants for that year’s Triwizards Tournament. Ah, but there’s a fourth name belched by the goblet, and to no viewer’s surprise, it belongs to Young Mr. Potter.

No one knows how Harry’s name made its way into the Goblet, especially since there’s a curse on it that prevents anyone under 17 from submitting a name, and Harry insists he didn’t even try. But rules is rules, and Harry’s the fourth contestant. The quartet must face three challenges, including dragons, merpeople, and a labyrinth. We know, of course, that Harry will make it through all of these tasks relatively intact, since his further exploits (books five and six) have already been published. But how does he do it? What new characters will attempt to foil him, and what new friends will he make?

Hogwarts is the host school for the tournament, and so two other schools will be spending the year with the Hogwarts students – a bevy of French lasses and a squadron of strapping central European lads. It is from these two schools, plus one from Hogwarts and Harry himself, that the four contestants are selected by the Goblet.

But perhaps Harry’s biggest challenge is a rather mundane one – finding a date to the Yule Ball. Perhaps the most endearing quality of Rowling’s books (and the movies) is that Harry, underneath it all, is really just another teenager. He’s alternately whiny, paranoid, unhappy, and joyful. And now he and his chums have been told they’ll all be taking dance lessons so they can look good on the floor later that year.

Of course, adding to the fun is the latest Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody (Brendan Gleeson), who has – as you might guess – one working eye and a sort of robotic eye that has a telescopic lens. And at least one fake leg. He kind of looks like the love child of C-3PO and the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island. The Dark Arts teacher is traditionally a one-year wonder – something always happens – so the mystery is what’ll happen to Moody, not if it’ll happen at all.

Rowling’s world is so well defined that new characters can be introduced in the books but mentioned only fleetingly in the movies – and we’re none the worse for it. For example, Madame Maxime, a half-giantess who’s the headmistress of the French school, falls for (surprise!) Hagrid, the half-giant. Ah, true love. We don’t see much of them, but when we do see Madame Maxime her appearances aren’t incongruous; they, in fact, help further the plot.

Since the movies are getting darker (tough times ahead!), we see less and less of the cute touches that inhabited the first two films, such as buying books in Diagon Alley, boarding the train to Hogwarts, seeing Hagrid greeting the first year students, and so forth. But in its place, we get a LOT of fantastic effects, such as Harry outracing and outmaneuvering a flying dragon – on his broom, of course; Harry speaking with Sirius via the Gryffindor fire, and the Quidditch World Cup. These scenes aren’t just wowie scenes done to shock and amaze the audience; they feel perfectly plausible and logical, not gratutious.

Mike Newell is the director this time around (the third director in the series), and the first Briton to helm one of the movies. He’s really adept at staging action scenes without distracting the audience with special effects – which is not to say the effects aren’t grand, just that they’re not the only thing the movie has going for it.

Everyone seems to be aging with their roles rather well (although Maggie Smith’s looking longer in the tooth than usual, perhaps, and Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore is much more energetic than Richard Harris’ was), and I was pleased to see that there wasn’t too much attention paid to the romantic angles of the story (particularly regarding the ball). I was further pleased to see the friendship of Hermione, Ron, and Harry being reevaluated. Readers of the series know that the interrelationships of these three friends will change drastically in due time, and it’s good to see just a hint of it here (rather than dwelling on it to the point of detracting from the rest of the story).

I would not recommend that kids under a certain age watch this movie. It is the first in the series to be rated PG-13 (fitting, since Harry is now 14), and its dark themes – including children in peril, death, serious injury – will probably be too much for the younger set who liked the first two films in the series.

All in all, I thought Goblet was the best of the bunch so far. Often, by the time a there’s a fourth in a movie series, the characters are so well worn that one can rather easily predict what’s going to happen to them. But this isn’t the case here, and that might be at least partly due to the changing directors (and tone). We’re familiar with Harry and his friends, and we root for them, but they never become so bland – or, to the other extreme, wacky for the sake of being wacky – that they become tiresome, not by a long shot.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: ***1/2