HARRY POTTER AND
THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
 
STARRING: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint,
Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman
2009, 153 Minutes, Directed by: David Yates
 Description:
In Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort is tightening his grip on
both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it
once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but
Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows
is fast approaching. Meanwhile, the students are under attack from a very
different adversary as teenage hormones rage across the ramparts. Love is in the
air, but tragedy lies ahead and Hogwarts may never be the same again. —
Amazon.com
You can either think of the
sixth Harry Potter movie as being slow-paced and low on action, or you can think
of it as spending more time on characterization and plot. We’d like to think of
it as the latter . . .
A recent Empire magazine
preview called the latest Potter installment both “funnier and scarier.” This is
quite accurate. On the one hand Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
spends time on the sort of character asides and comical interludes that most
directors will leave on the cutting floor. Yet on the other hand a creeping
sense of foreboding and gloom hangs over the proceedings. From the get-go author
J.K. Rowling wrote from the assumption that her readers will grow up along with
her characters. The truth is that these movies had been getting progressively
darker with each new film. Sure, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
won’t exactly freak out adult audiences and by “darker” we don’t mean that Harry
started snorting coke or something – the point is that parents should heed the
age restriction. Half-Blood Prince has a few of the sort of scenes that
would give little children nightmares for weeks to come.
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"Doesn't disappoint in the way that, let’s say, Police Academy
6 - City Under Siege ever did . . ." |
Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince clocks in at two-and-a-half hours. We found it took us a
while to get into things, but once we did it was gripping enough right up to the
genuinely moving ending. Not much really happens when one thinks about it. After
all, Rowling’s original book serves as nothing but a setup for the final book in
the series (Deathly Hallows, which will be filmed as two separate
movies). Also, the acting isn’t always consistent, but the movie has heart which
is more than one can say of most special effects blockbusters.
Still despite the generous
running time - fifteen minutes longer than Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! - the movie feels almost too
economical. One wants it to spend more time on plot aspects such as Alan
Rickman’s “is he or isn’t he?” villain, especially considering how pivotal his
character’s loyalties are to the plot. One also wants some more scenes featuring
the trio of Death Eaters led by the demented Bellatrix played by Helena Bonham
Carter. Proceedings suffer from the absence of an off-screen villain to boo and
hiss. The previous film had Dolores Umbridge – a camp schoolmarm version of
Nurse Ratched. Here Voldemort appears as a, er, threatening cloud formation.
Bellatrix and her Dead Eaters could have been this movie’s General Zod and
fellow Kryptonians, but it was alas not to be. Maybe the upcoming Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I (release date: 19 November 2010) and
Part II (15
July 2011) will make more of them.
If your idea of the best
possible time at the cinemas is the audio-sensory pummeling of the
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen variety,
then you might be disappointed by this latest Potter instalment. If
you’ve been loyally following the movies and / or reading the books then
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a worth-while entry in the series.
 Maybe
their secret has been that each of them has been faithful to the source
material. (That, and the fact that their box office takings remained high which
means that their budgets have never been cut back drastically as is usually the
case with sequels. The special effects and sets are again of high quality.) Few
movie franchises remain of a consistently high quality this long (six movies!)
and it is amazing that the series hasn’t truly managed to disappoint in the way
that, let’s say, Police Academy 6: City Under Siege, Friday the 13th
Part VI – Jason Lives and Halloween 6 – The Curse of Michael Myers
did.
Some notes: they may be corny
but we kinda missed those “Previously on Battlestar Galactica” intros
with this movie. Just a short montage to get one up to speed again with what
exactly happened in the last movie. After all it has been about two years! Also,
we expected an end title announcing that “Harry Potter will be back in Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows – 2010” to pop up at the end just like those
old James Bond movies. It was alas not to be.
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