'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' Review

Posted on July 15, 2009 - 3:18pm by michael The new Harry Potter movie is overflowing with the romantic interests that we expect to crop up among the cast at this point in their lives. I remember wondering early in the series how they were going to keep making movies about young wizard students when the cast must be entering their 20s by the final films, and so far they’ve pulled it off with the only drawback being a sneaking feeling that, were all the love-sick teenager scenes taken out of the new movie, the 2 ½ hour running time would probably be reduced to about 80 minutes.

Not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, one of the many strengths of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is that it contains elements from just about every genre you can think of. There are tons and tons of awkward adolescent romance, but it never becomes cheesy or tiring. In fact, the vast majority of the instances of different characters stumbling over their amorous attempts at each other are remarkably endearing. More importantly, the movie also has tons of action, wonderful performances across the board, and elements of tense drama, fascinating mystery, and even more than a few scenes that emulate the creepy effectiveness of a classy horror film. This may very well be the best Potter film so far, which is not a quality generally associated with the sixth film in any series.

[caption id="attachment_45276" align="alignleft" width="364" caption="Far from being locked in his bedroom, Harry now spends his down time in muggle world kicking back in cafes, reading the news about Death Eaters destroying the Millennium Bridge and the fact that he is the Chosen One. "][/caption]

Another thankful change is that the familiar structure of the first few films is all but gone completely. The series began with movies that all basically ran the same way. We meet Harry as he's suffering through daily life with the Dursley’s, he runs through a brick wall to Hogwarts, sees all kinds of cool new wizard toys, has a run-in with Voldemort, and ultimately winds up back on the magical Hogwarts Express train on his way back home for another boring, magicless summer, which he’ll spend wallowing in stupid reality. Not this time. All the rules are changing now, and the result is that the entertainment level of the new movie is through the roof, even at its prodigious running time.

Okay so here’s the plot in exactly 100 words. Once again, Voldemort is “back,” prompting the Death Eaters to raise hell at Hogwarts as well as the muggle world. A climactic confrontation between Harry and Voldemort is now pretty inevitable, so Dumbledore sort of tricks a former potions professor into coming back to Hogwarts with the hopes of extracting critical information about Voldemort’s weaknesses. A tangled web of teen romance complicates the whole matter, while Malfoy and Snape seem to have gotten involved with a scheme involving the Dark Lord, and over it all hangs the question of who this Half-Blood Prince is and what is his significance.

Sounds pretty good, huh? Well it is, believe me. The movie is beautifully photographed and the special effects are absolutely stunning, some of the best I’ve ever seen. Also, the critical role of Professor Horace Slugborn, the potions professor with the valuable knowledge of Voldemort, is played with a wonderfully disarming charm by Jim Broadbent, an amazing actor who seems to lack the ability to be anything but disarming and charming. I want to meet that guy. Also of note are a couple of young boys - Hero Fiennes-Tiffin and Frank Delane - who play a young Tom Riddle with such a spot-on, oily creepiness that they seem to have been trained from birth to play the part of a Dark Lord. Their mothers must be so proud!

Helena Bonham Carter also shows up as a friend of Malfoy’s mother who coerces Snape into entering into the Unbreakable Vow, which is critical to one of the major developments of the story.

[caption id="attachment_45289" align="alignleft" width="368" caption="The good professor prepares to reward a successful student with some liquid luck."][/caption]

Other major developments include how Tom Riddle came to divide his own soul and become a Dark Lord, as well as some important details about what kinds of troubles Harry will encounter when he seeks to destroy him. It is all even more fascinating than you might think, and the movie ends with the feeling that it is nearly impossible to make any real predictions about any of the characters, and that if they wanted to they could make another seven movies just with the revelations of the last hour of this one. That the story is a brilliant imaginative creation is a serious understatement.

I don’t count myself among Harry Potter’s biggest fans. I haven’t read a Harry Potter novel since "The Goblet of Fire", which I’m pretty sure I read in 2004, and, to be perfectly honest, I doubt I’ll read another one. But the latest movie is not only probably the best movie in the series, but I am naming it as one of the best movies of 2009 so far. It’s got black magic, exciting Quidditch action, memories in glass vials, liquid luck, romance, death, evil, comedy, misdirected love potions, humanoid water creatures, and a tearful eulogy of a lost pet – a tarantula the size of a Volkswagon.

And really, where else are you going to find all that stuff?

The Bean Meter



[caption id="attachment_45290" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="5 Beans out of 5."][/caption]