Your Mom Goes to Hogwarts.

Those prefects sure know how to live when it comes to bath time. Countless faucets spewing all sorts of mysteriously colored liquids, including but not limited to scented bubble baths, artesian spring water and bleach, judging by Harry’s complete lack of skin pigmentation. But here’s what really got us. You may not know this, but the actress who plays Moaning Myrtle is forty. Now we defy you to watch that scene again without getting creeped out.

Apparently the HP folks learned from the failed merchandising of the recent Star Wars films. Tara attempted to locate some fun HP stuff as an act of goodwill for her recent visit to Lisa’s pad. An hour in Target ended with nothing except some chocolate and bug gum, both completely unrelated to HP. Where will Tara get her blue Beauxbatons tracksuit? Will Lisa ever locate a Hogwarts hoodie? These questions will never be answered.

Both authors also feel confident in their ability to fire off a biting insult to the average British citizen should the need arise. Nothing puts fear into the hearts of your enemies like a good “You stink!” or an angry “Off to bed with you!” Thankfully, Moody is around to properly school young Hogwarts students about the proper way to harass others. It’s nice to see someone else who shares our belief that transfiguration, rather than communication, is the best way to deal with any problems one may encounter. Good thing this movie taught us the correlation between ferrets and crotches in the Hogwarts establishment that may otherwise have gone unnoticed.


Here’s what you need to succeed at the second task: a kick-ass calf wand holster and some flora phlegm. Consider yourself warned: even that won’t ward off the creepy shark-tailed merpeople. This sentiment may stem from a too-early viewing of Jaws that left Lisa permanently scarred. But those are her issues… maybe Tara should finish up this paragraph. Speaking of the merpeople, we’re pretty sure that Ariel didn’t look like that. If she did, becoming a human was the best choice she ever made. Other issues with this task come from Harry’s failure to recall that he is a wizard until after the task was officially over. Could he not have used his blast-out-of-the-water spell at the beginning of the task rather than waiting until he was about to be drowned by the MIB underwater alien babies? Honestly, Harry. You could have won that task. What would Pappy Potter have done? He would have acted like a wizard, this much we assure you. He also would have tapped into the wizard cappuccino machine sitting on the viewing platform. Any respectable wizard would have.


And after several more scenes about which we can’t think of anything snarky to say, we come to the final task. The Hogwarts students gather round to watch the Champions enter the labyrinth and then sit there, essentially blind to any goings-on of the task for however many hours it takes for someone to find a Triwizard cup in several square miles of hedge maze. Sounds like a blast- where can we buy tickets? At least they’ve got the bizarro-wizard instruments to keep them entertained. Geez, and we thought regular baritones were bad.

Dumbledore gathers the Champions around him to give them some mysterious and basically unhelpful words of pseudo-wisdom: “In the maze, you'll find no dragons or creatures of the deep. Instead you'll find something much more challenging: A waning CGI budget.” Or something to that effect. Then, they enter the last task: Attack of the Killer Shrubbery. Most of us have had a horrifying experience or two involving shrubbery. Whether it be an unfortunate incident involving excessive mixing of certain beverages with a Metro ride gone horribly wrong or a childhood game of hide and seek ending with a terrifyingly translucent spider crawling menacingly towards you, shrubs are something we can all unite against. At least we can be safe in the knowledge that we have never had hedges that would attack with little to no warning. Simple blessings. It could be hoped that a tournament reliably known to end in the gruesome death of at least one of its participants would have a bigger final challenge than restless shrubbery and the occasional errant vine. Gone are all the daunting creatures that filled the book-maze; they’ve been omitted in favor of the Stiff Wind of Bad Sportsmanship.


So Harry and Cedric grab the cup together, blah blah transported to a cemetery blah. And while Lisa did not take Tara up on her twenty dollar bet to stand up and shout this to the masses in the theater, she will here:

CEDRIC IS IMMEDIATELY AK’D BY WORMTAIL.

Sorry, Ced. Then it’s time for Cooking with Pettigrew: a dash of your estranged father’s femur, a pinch of your lackey’s entire right hand, a tablespoon of your arch nemesis’ blood and baby, you got a stew goin’. Creepy giant naked fetus stew. BAM! Lord Voldemort has returned with less of a nose than Michael Jackson, and he’s super pissed about his terrible manicure and his lack of flip-flops. This calls for an evil class reunion: the still-loyal Deatheaters zoom in from parts unknown and prepare to rock it old school, but not until after Voldy rips off their hoodies and Mardi-Gras masks and makes them cry like little girls. That man is the master of the “your mother” joke genre. Perhaps Malfoy should invest in some Deatheater static cling spray- he definitely had some frizzies when his hood came off.

Voldy then turns his attention and his insults to Harry, who promptly hides behind a gravestone before eventually facing him in a combination magical laser light show and cage match to the death. Lisa sat a bit close to the screen due to a misunderestimation of travel time, and the sudsy magic that flowed freely from their wands was so bright her eyes were watering. Were we ever involved in such a duel, we would do well to remember sunglasses, is what we’re saying here. The tears of a sensitive-eyed individual are not very intimidating.


Now, we aren’t going to ruin the ending of the movie for you. Maybe Harry Potter dies in the end of the movie based on the fourth book of a series of seven books, all of which are named after him. We’re in no position to spoil that for you. Go out and enjoy the movie while it’s still in theaters- God knows we did.

mischief managed...