Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Does anyone over 16 remember where we left off in the Harry Potter movies? It's been two years since the last one and I confess that when I sat down to watch it, I had no idea what was supposed to happen in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (good thing that the movie lasts almost two-and-a-half hours, I guess, which gives you enough time during the lulls to remember details). But as Harry tells Dumbledore when the Hogwarts headmaster whisks him away to yet another adventure at the beginning of the movie and then asks Harry, “I bet you’re wondering why I brought you here”—“actually, sir, after all these years, I just go along with it.”

And for the most part, the movie, darker even than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, satisfies—especially with the help of stunning visuals, which surpass the past movies in sophistication. A confrontation with the Death Eaters outside the Weasleys’ home, for example, includes Harry and company in an exhilarating and scary run through a disorienting field of tall bull rushes. When Harry and Dumbledore travel to retrieve one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes near the climax of the movie, they find themselves at a remote seaside cave that is surrounded by sickeningly violent waves but inside, is itself eerily, deceptively still. The scene is a highly emotional one and visually stunning one, as Harry and his mentor fight off zombie-like Inferi.

While the movie’s main point is for Harry to figure out that Voldemort split his sould in seven and placed the pieces in Horcruxes, much of the movie centers around the raging teen hormones of the main characters, who are caught in love triangles. Ron, now a Quidditch hero, “snogs” with an overly lovey-dovey Lavender Brown while Hermoine pines away for him; Harry and Ginny, who is dating someone else, circle each other carefully—and boringly. Their first kiss as portrayed in the film will rightfully disappoint fans. As Ron, Rupert Grint has matured into a very good comic actor and his scenes are among the funniest in the movie. Also good is Tom Felton, playing Draco Malfoy, whose mission to kill Dumbledore, mandated by Voldemort, alienates him from even being a teen and turns him, at least for this film, into a tragic figure. A particular standout in the film: Helena Bonham Carter (as Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange), whose committed performance of controlled lunacy steals every scene she’s in.

The movie’s biggest disappointment, as many fans will probably say, is director David Yates’ handling of the end of the book. The final battle, in which Draco and the Death Eaters confront Dumbledore as Harry watches helplessly, is short and strangely anti-climactic, inexplicably different from the book, and a scene in which Harry’s announces to Ron and Hermione that he will leave Hogwarts to find the Horcruxes, strangely lacking in emotion (I’ve never been a big fan of Daniel Radcliffe’s and here he once again falls a big short in a big moment). Also missing: a scene, or even, mention of Harry’s breaking up with Ginny to protect her as he embarks on his dangerous final mission. I smell a flashback in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (out November 2010).