Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Rating

Director

David Yates

Screenplay

Steve Kloves (Novel: J.K. Rowling)

Length

153 min.

Starring

Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Wright, James Phelps, Oliver Phelps, Julie Walters, Mark Williams, David Thewlis, Natalia Tena, Helena Bonham Carter, Dave Legeno, Timothy Spall, Helen McCrory, Tom Felton

MPAA Rating

PG for scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality

Review

Nearly reaching the end of its eight-part legacy, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince takes a departure from its exciting, action-filled predecessors and focuses instead, perhaps too readily, on the relationships of Harry, Ron and Hermione.

The revolving door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts has continued full-circle as Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) has finally gained control of the class he always longed to teach. Whether he succumbs to the same fates that his forebears have in the position won’t be revealed here, but the new teacher at Hogwarts is instead recruited to teach Snape’s old class Potions.

On Harry’s (Daniel Radcliffe) first day in class, he and Ron fight over the two remaining copies of their required text in the cabinet. One, a pristine version of the tome, and the other a beaten-up, written-in copy. While you might have expected Ron to end up with the hand-me-down, it’s Harry who picks up the squalid copy. Inside, however, he finds the scribblings of someone calling himself the “Half-Blood Prince” and it becomes Harry’s task to find out who this self-titled person is.

However, the mystery of who the Half-Blood Prince is, takes a significant back seat to the romantic entanglements of Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) and very brief snippets of Harry learning more about Tom Riddle and the purpose of such items as the diary from Chamber of Secrets. Matter of fact, the film focuses so little on the excellent mechanics and story elements of the book that it could probably have been retitled Harry Potter and the Snogging and been a more appropriate title since it seems to focus only a fraction of its time on titular pursuits.

For that matter, the last-chapter revelation of the identity of the “Half-Blood Prince” is so quick and dropped so much faster, that it jolts the audience out of its boredom. And what happened with the first two-plus hours of the film? There certainly wasn’t much information to be processed.

As the series grows long in the tooth, the films are veering farther away from the source material, developing a world of their own. Tough as it was to convert Goblet of Fire from the lengthy tome, at least the film felt like it pulled the best elements of the story and focused them onto something exciting and interesting. And as weak as Order of the Phoenix was, most everything important made it through. But for whatever reason, screenwriter Steve Kloves managed to drop half of the juiciest events and, instead, focus on the relationships of the story. While that was a big part of the book, it wasn’t the most important.

As a fan of the Harry Potter books and the movies (I’m even one of those who liked the early Chris Columbus films), I can’t help but be disappointed in where the franchise is and has gone. The book gave the film an absolutely amazing climactic battle that is ignored and pushed past in the film. (SPOILER WARNING) Even the much-ballyhooed death of Albus Dumbledore was handled with more aplomb and sorrow in the written word than it was in the film. Matter of fact, the entire funeral sequence, which added indelibly to the sense of loss is entirely absent.

So, what does Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince do well. Well, obviously, the romantic entanglements. While these could have been cut back dramatically to allow for more edge-of-your-seat entertainment, David Yates does manage to help the audience connect with and understand the Ron-Hermione dynamic as well as the burgeoning relationship between Harry and Ginny. The emotional conflicts between Ron, Hermione and Ron are so well done that you almost forget that there seems to be nothing else of importance going on in the film.

While I can hope for the best when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows finally reaches the big screen, the fact that it’s been dumped into two features instead of one is an early nail in the film’s coffin. The book itself is shorter than some of the earlier installments and features far fewer important scenes, leaving much of the book feeling like a chapter or two out of The Lord of the Rings. In those novels, the last half of The Two Towers and the first half of The Return of the King  are some of the most boring segments of the series. It mostly consists of Frodo and Sam walking, and walking, and walking, then something happens, then they start walking again, and walking, and walking.

So, how Deathly Hallows could be expanded into two films is beyond my comprehension, but hopefully it will allow them to get all of the important elements of the story pushed in. And maybe then they can avoid what has occurred with Half-Blood Prince, leaving some of the best and most interesting parts of the book on the cutting room floor.

Review Written

November 30, 2009