Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I haven’t read the books. In general I’ve tried to avoid reviews and other spoilers for the film (though I did get spoiled for the ultra-major event, annoyingly). I’ve heard a lot of people say this was the best Potter film yet. They lauded the admirable job condensing the plot from the book into a 2.5 hour film. They loved the more mature (but not too mature) dealing with love.

This was also the first of the series I’ve seen in the theater. I started watching Harry Potter last year and blew through all of the movies over about 5 months. For the most part I liked the way the films worked together. Little hiccups here and there, but overall I felt the films improved in complexity and talent as they went. The battle and surrounding drama at the end of Order of the Phoenix was both a good payoff and a teaser for what I assume is to come.

So when I went into this film, I was pretty much expecting to be blown away by major plot developments, deadly battles, and “Dark Secrets Revealed” as promised by the movie’s tagline.

Eh.

This was the first movie in the series that I felt did not do a good enough job condensing the plot – and remember, I’ve never read the book. I got a small sense that there was more to be had in previous movies, but this one just screamed “INCOMPLETE!” to me. Don’t get me wrong… the screenwriter apparently had a monumental task in front of him to condense this one, and I’m sure he did the best he, or possibly anyone, could. In the end, though, it just didn’t feel right. I didn’t care who the Half-Blood Prince was, even when it was revealed at the end – that mystery just wasn’t developed enough. It certainly didn’t warrant being the title of the film. In general, scenes seemed kind of stitched together. Something was off with the flow. I also thought the pacing was off, with too much energy spent on love-sick teens at the expense of moving the plot along.

Many love-focused scenes were pretty good, for the most part, and would have worked perfectly as punctuation in a better movie, but there was just WAY too much time spent on that topic—especially with Ron and his little hang-ups. Yeah, I laughed where I supposed to, but for the most part it was at the ridiculous over-acting from a certain character or two. On the other hand, there were some really nice, well-done moments in those scenes. They should have followed that pattern for the others. For me there was enough emphasis that Harry Potter and the Love-Sick School would also have been a workable title for this film.

As far as “Dark Secrets Revealed” — okay, which secrets would that be? Yeah, there was one big “secret” revealed about the Half-Blood Prince, but it’s obvious that we’re being fed a lie there in relation to motives and things will turn around in the next and final movies. There was also a secret revealed by Slughorn on which the plot supposedly turned, and it was a big one, I suppose,  but it seemed to me like Dumbledore had already figured it out anyway and was trying to do something about it. Perhaps the number of instances was the shocker for him. (Though I still can’t figure out why Slughorn was reluctant to share it. How did it affect him at all?)

Which leads me to the scene in the cave. The end here, I think, was supposed to invoke a sense of wonder at Dumbledore’s power, but I suspect it was far better realized in the book than on screen. His display at the end of Order of the Phoenix did more for me, and I was hoping for more here. It’s not that it was bad, it just didn’t match the build-up.

In the end, I think that was the problem with the movie overall. There really is some great stuff there, but it just doesn’t come together and step up to match the build-up.

One final thought: this movie works extremely well in one regard—as a lead-in to the finale. While it’s not as well-realized on its own, it does have a few major plot movers put in place and sets up the final quest (which, honestly, seems like a big enough task that it should take another 5 movies).

3 out of 5 stars.

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