Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – Movie Review

No spoilers here!

On quality of movie making alone: A+

On a bunch of other factors: B-

Recommend it: Of course, true Harry Potter fans like myself can’t help ourselves.

Even though the film is a whopping 2.5 hours it went by fast, yet it moved slow if that makes sense.  There were so many long & drawn out silences with no soundtrack I felt oddly uncomfortable.  I also felt the dialogue was way too short & to the point.  For example in the scene between Ginny & Harry when they hide the half-blood prince’s potions book in the room of requirement, they exchange 3 sentences.  A lot of the dialogue felt perfunctory in order to squeeze more plot in.  And who can blame them when J.K. Rowling can’t write a book in less than 800 pages?!

I was also disappointed by what was left out.  We saw so little of Hagrid, Neville & other memorable characters.  But, again what can they do?  Lastly, Dave & I were really dissappointed with the final scene involving Bellatrix & the other death eaters at Hogwarts.  In the books, the scene is 1,000 x’s more horrifying & tragic.  And honestly, in a movie that moved this slow, with such little action, they really could have used much more than a LeStrange shattering some windows & a somber death scene.

My biggest issue was perhaps that the movie wasn’t really about the half-blood prince!  They barely talked about it, only referred to it like 3 times & didn’t offer any real closure on why they were connected at all.  After the movie, you know very little into the heart and soul of the half blood prince… something the book accomplished beautifully.

Okay, having been a real Debby Downer, I will say that I really liked the serious tone to this one, the pacing, the fact that in some areas they didn’t dilly-dally with stupid stuff & just got to the point.  I loved the cinematography and the way they portrayed the penseive, Quidditich & the Castle.

Afterwards, as Dave, Jason, Andrea & Alayna talked it through we realized it’s probably a bit like *The Two Towers* in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  It is the “in-between” movie.. no real beginning & no real ending.  It’s the movie that has to be made to connect you to the final story.

So yeah, hate to say this -honestly, really really hate to say this but, I found it a schooch boring. 🙁  And I feel for all those who haven’t read *Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince – Book 6* because you would not know what on earth is going on.