Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Review by Loc

Five movies in and there hasn’t been one majestic offering. Sure, some were good flicks, some were even very good, but there hasn’t been one that was astounding. You’d think with so many shots at it, they would nail one and just blow you away. Maybe sixth time’s a charm? Quick hit: nope.

Rather than provide a recap, I’ll leave that to you, the book, and Wikipedia. Instead, let us focus on the deficiencies that actually made this movie painful to watch. Starting with, boredom! This is almost a two-and-a-half hour long movie and it seems like the first two hours is obsessed with boring teenage romance. Don’t get me wrong, teenage love stories aren’t inherently boring, just look at all the flicks that succeed at delivering the goods: Sixteen Candles, 10 Things I Hate About You, even Superbad. You can have fun with the awkwardness, the goofiness, the apprehensive first kisses, all that stuff can be fun. In Harry Potter 6, it’s not fun, it’s not engaging, it’s just boring. And it’s the only thing you see for two hours!

In trying to appeal to the Twilight crowd, we follow Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny through various love triangles. And they all suck. In the novel, maybe it works because you actually weaved that together with the overarching story and battle against the rising Voldemort. Here, you get nothing. It’s a bore. BORE!

Then you get a half hour of good stuff. Action, plot, story advancement, you know, the movie you came to watch. You begin to realize how the final installments of the Harry Potter flicks will be delivering some major goods. So then why wait until the end of the movie to do that? I don’t know, it’s probably one of those decisions of “staying true to the novel” while “adapting for the big screen”. I’ll never understand why filmmakers have such a hard time with this contradiction. If you’re going to adapt anything, then you’re no longer staying true to the book. And if you’re no longer staying true, then make a damn movie, not a step-by-step recreation of the pages that omit major pieces of the story.

For example, who’s the Half Blood Prince? Well, you get a two-line explanation at the climax of the film and poof, you’re done with that mystery. It’s in the damn title of the flick, shouldn’t there be some focus on it? Nope, because that backstory would have been too much to cram in. Uh, you mean you couldn’t shorten the stupid teen romance bits to fit in an actual plot? Horrible.

In the end, this was a glaring example of filler-movie. It provided so little substance, it grew the characters a tiny amount, and then slammed you with a couple biggies at the end and said, see you next fall. It was an extremely weak effort that provided near nothing to the Harry Potter mythos and continues to grow in disappointment as I think about it. When you end up buying the eight movie set in a couple years, this will be one of the discs that you never play, that’s how inconsequential it is.

Overall, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince offered little substance despite its efforts to become Harry Potter and the Raging Hormones. It’s weird because every Harry Potter effort has been modestly good at best, and frighteningly mundane at its worst. I wonder when someone takes a shot at remaking these, if they’ll go all out and make it their own. Until then, we’re left with some good, some bad, and this crapfest. Out of 7 horcruxes, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is cursed to 3 disembodied soul fragments. Blah, I needed a potronum spell to fend off my boredom.