Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The new Harry Potter film doesn’t have much respect for story.
Wizard kings: It may be top at the box office, but this sequel doesn’t have much magic.
This sixth but by no means final Harry Potter movie serves mainly as connective tissue. Not a self-contained story in its own right, the film doesn’t go anywhere or really do anything at all—and aside from one rather large, widely known spoiler that arrives in the final moments, nothing happens in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince . It serves mainly as logistical scaffolding to reposition the characters and strum up some backstory so that everybody will be where they need to be for the closing sequel(s), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , arriving in two parts sometime during 2010 and 2011, if we are to believe the hype.
This is an awful shame, because this Potter series really seemed to find its footing with 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , wherein director David Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg hacked and slashed J.K. Rowling’s doorstop-sized tome into trim fighting form, locating a central theme of angry, horny Harry’s coming of age and jettisoning all the tangential, annoying J.Ro frou-frou that was too often included in these films as fan-service.
It was the first Harry Potter movie that actually felt like a movie —something that had been adapted and recontextualized for a different medium, instead of merely regurgitated from an audio book.
But for whatever reason, Goldenberg got booted and screenwriter Steve Kloves (who penned the first four pictures) somehow landed his job back, and The Half-Blood Prince suffers from the same wandering attention span and digressive lack of focus as those earlier Potter films. It’s aggressively overlong, borderline incoherent and drags out for more than two and a half hours thanks to a ton of pointless scenes that Potter partisans will no doubt tell you are of desperate importance, “because they were in the book.”
The film begins quite brilliantly, with a swarm of Death Eaters tearing down London’s Millennium Bridge, while young Harry tries exploiting his newfound tabloid infamy as “The Chosen One” to pick up chicks. But forget about any further collisions between this catastrophic battle between good and evil and anything resembling the real world. Potter is quickly whisked back to the secluded, curiously depopulated set at Hogwarts, and apparently we’re supposed to assume the British government hasn’t the slightest interest in following up on these monster attacks that keep killing hundreds of civilians.
Half-Blood Prince quickly doubles back, superfast, to the same format we’ve seen in all six previous pictures—a leisurely paced stroll through the semester with yet another great English character actor (Jim Broadbent, this time) introduced as “the new teacher with a sinister secret.”
I’m sorry, but I’ve been through this five times before in these past few years, and this school seriously needs to be shut down as soon as possible. How many duplicitous, child-murdering agents from the Lord of Darkness with a shelf full of BAFTAS will be employed before somebody finally files a fucking complaint?
Then they talk. Good lord, do they talk. Seemingly every conversation in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince alludes to some sort of mystery or conspiracy that’s going to pay off later, presumably in the next movie. Meanwhile they stand around jawing about it all, occasionally playing Quidditch to irritate me even further—as I’ve been watching these movies for damn near a decade and I still can’t figure out the rules to that foolish sport.
As there’s no sense of forward momentum, Half-Blood Prince is a stopgap exercise. More than an hour is blown on the painfully obvious attraction between Rupert Grint’s Ron Weasley and Emma Watson’s Hermione Granger, but even the payoff of their transparently Han Solo/Princess Leia relationship is cruelly negated by a convenient memory lapse. Likewise there’s an object that Harry and Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore spend the back nine of the movie chasing down, and it, too, proves to be a totally worthless red herring.
The finale, which I am told was a page-turning free-for-all in Rowling’s book, is here rendered as a meager skirmish better befitting a TV movie. What needed to be epic feels more like a bunch of actors crowding each other within the confines of a tiny set; it’s the cheapest-looking brush-off of a beloved character since Shatner bought the farm in Star Trek: Generations .
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince feels like one of those second-to-last episodes of the odious 24 . All setup and no payoff, it just reshuffles the deck and stalls for time. ■
Grade: C-
Running time: Too damn long
Rated: PG (to bring in more kids than the prior Potter s’ PG-13 ratings did)
Budget: $250 million
How many more in the series?: One
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1. bongolock said... on Jul 16, 2009 at 02:27PM
“clearly u have not read the books and are unworthy to review this movie. a quick search on wiki would tell u the rules of quidditch. tsk tsk”
2. dannybailey said... on Jul 17, 2009 at 12:22AM
“Your review makes a lot of great point. You did an awesome job of articulating exactly what I was having issues with as I left the theater. I thought the movie was entertaining, but that didn't necessarily mean that it was good. I'm glad to see that you seem to be putting some of the blame on Kloves (who gets away with way too much, if you ask me). How the hell did he get his job back? I also completely agree with you about Order of the Phoenix being the best film.
One thing I disagree with you about is the fan-service. First off, no need to diss the fans of the books. Maybe you think you're above reading them (sounds like it), but they wouldn't be making this stuff into movies if people weren't as passionate as they are about the books. Plus, some of the worst and most pointless scenes in the film weren't even in the book. Just sayin'.”
3. Andrew said... on Jul 25, 2009 at 04:37PM
“Clearly you didn't understand the movie well and you need to watch it again while paying closer attention to dialogue. Obviously, the books always have more depth to everything and characters will be more rounded and less cartoonish. Also, what you say about the Death Eaters attacks on the world having no repercusions is dealt with in the book. But still, how can you say that Harry and Dumbledore's quest is a red herring? Clearly there are things that you did not comprehend.”
4. Richard said... on Jul 26, 2009 at 10:03AM
“Your review is exactly on point. I have seen the other movies and enjoyed them as they for the most part have a plot...you know a beginning, a middle, and an end with all the climax and resolution stuff...this movie had none of that. My daughter has told me that you have to know the books, but I didn't have to before. Besides, whatever happened to narration for us morons (parents) who like to take their kids to movies, but would also like to enjoy them. Good review. Thanks.”
5. Chelsea said... on Jul 26, 2009 at 05:36PM
“No no no, you see, it was VERY important to make sure all the teenage crushes and obsessions were kept in. People LOVE seeing "romance", and who needs that plot stuff anyway?
I just saw this movie, and I got really annoyed as I noticed they were focusing so much on the romance and so little on the interesting stuff(also known as the plot). My favorite part was the one line we got revealing the Half Blood Prince's identity. 15 seconds of "oh, so *he* was..." before marching straight on to the rushed conclusion(which had to be so because so much time was wasted on the crucial plot points of "awkward Ron/Hermoine tension" and "Harry's stalker"). It was either that part or how the mystery of the HBP got shoved aside for most of the movie, before whatsherface made Harry get rid of the book because....because...the viewers don't need the characters to tell them why even though there's no apparent reason why the book needed to be gotten rid of, that's why.”
6. Anonymous said... on Jul 26, 2009 at 06:22PM
“The rules of quidditch are quite simple and if you read the books, I'm sorry but the 5th one is not the best. They leave so much out. I have to agree that not much happens in the 6th one, but the stuff that does is VERY important for you to understand the 7th one. And the romance is pretty much the plot in this one. Even in the book there wasn't much of the other stuff except for trying to find out who owned the book. Seriously, you need to read the books. They are so much better anyway.”
7. Bhibsen said... on Jul 26, 2009 at 07:32PM
“The point missed here is that this movie is a dissapointment but not a complete piece of trash. It was entertaining, but it did not treat the story well, placing far too much importance on the sub-plots and not paying nearly enough attention to the main plot lines. The lack of dealing with how the attacks on the Muggle population were handled, the political tension related to Vodemorts return, etc was just shameful. In addition, even the major plot themes that WERE visited were treated almost dismissively, such as the identity of the Half Blood Prince and of course Dumbledore's death and funeral, which in the book were completly different and the most moving part of the story. In this film, they are treated as parallels, as snippets of information worthy only of a "by the way". This film chose to leave in the less important scenes and take out the more important. That is why it is the biggest failure thus far of this series. Here's hoping they do better with the final two parts.”
8. Bhibsen said... on Jul 26, 2009 at 07:32PM
“The point missed here is that this movie is a dissapointment but not a complete piece of trash. It was entertaining, but it did not treat the story well, placing far too much importance on the sub-plots and not paying nearly enough attention to the main plot lines. The lack of dealing with how the attacks on the Muggle population were handled, the political tension related to Vodemorts return, etc was just shameful. In addition, even the major plot themes that WERE visited were treated almost dismissively, such as the identity of the Half Blood Prince and of course Dumbledore's death and funeral, which in the book were completly different and the most moving part of the story. In this film, they are treated as parallels, as snippets of information worthy only of a "by the way". This film chose to leave in the less important scenes and take out the more important. That is why it is the biggest failure thus far of this series. Here's hoping they do better with the final two parts.”
9. Bhibsen said... on Jul 26, 2009 at 07:38PM
“P.S. I just wanted to say that I have been reading a number of reviews of this film to see if people and reviewers agree with my perspective on it. I have been very disappointed to find it reviewed by critics who admit in thier pieces that they have not read the books. That is simply sloppy journalism. I cannot believe that any editor worth his or her salt would allow a review of a film adapted from a book to be turned in, let alone printed, written by someone who had not read the material being adapted. It shows in the criticisms as well, as they are misplaced on Ms. Rowling in some cases, accusing her of not dealing with subject matter that was treated thoroughly in the books but glossed over or completely missing from the film. Whatever Ms. Rowlings' need of serious editing, submitting a review without reading the subject matter is like a fourth grader handing in his book report using only the cliff notes and not reading the book. Shame on all of you!”
10. Bleak said... on Jul 27, 2009 at 06:49AM
“Most troubling to me was the way Harry seemed like a depressed, passive person which is not true to the character at all. In his scenes with Ginny, she treated him like a child, at one point even tying his shoes for him, so they had no romantic chemistry. It was disjointed with key people and plot points rushed so that there was little emotional impact for me. Also, it was boring, which I never thought a Potter film would be. In my opinion, the
third film was a masterpiece and they've been going downhill ever since.”
11. Charlotte said... on Jul 28, 2009 at 09:29AM
“Part One
Though the books of Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince seriously needed some editing, both had more than enough plot going on to make an excellent 2.5 hour film. The problem is that in both cases, but especially HBP, the filmmakers chose all the wrong parts, then added some nonsensical invented material, that completely failed to make up for the gaps in the plot caused by the dropped material .
JK Rowling may have spent what felt like 350 pages on the 'romance' in HBP, far too much, but that still left her almost the same amount for the plot. The film spent too much on inessential things, that weren't half as interesting as in the books, leaving only about 1/2 hour for the key plot points. Kloves skill for witty dialogue is poor, and WB's constant attempts to market the Miley Cyrus fans (hence Hermione's constant priority, despite the actress' complete lack of talent) means that a coherent plot is jettisoned for all the scenes that young screaming girls will enjoy.”
12. Charlotte said... on Jul 28, 2009 at 09:48AM
“Part Two
In the book the Minister of Magic and British Prime Minister meet to discuss attacks on the Muggle population, covering your point about muggle lack of interest - WB replaced the discussion about the threat to both worlds with a 'crash bang wallop' scene of a bridge being destroyed, then never mentioned again.
They then inserted a nonsensical attack at Xmas to add 'action', despite nothing happening in it - no duels, no apparent risk to life, no explanation, just running in tall grass - yawn . Yes, they burn down the Burrow, but as neither Ron nor Ginny mention it again, or seem at all bothered, why should we care? Both of these invented scenes were never mentioned again, therefore their impact was negligible.
The dropped fight scene/funeral at Hogwarts after Dumbledore's death would have created excitement/emotion at the end, giving a feeling of building up to a climax, some payoff after 2 hours of watching, Instead it fizzled to nothing - foolish decision, boring film.”
13. Taco said... on Jul 31, 2009 at 04:18AM
“People keep saying that you need to have read the book to properly understand the film. That's bad filmmaking. So this is not a film in itself, but rather, a visual aid to the book?
The books were done exceedingly well and the mistake is made to visualize as much as possible from the book into the screen, rather than analyzing key plot points and cutting out 80% of the chaff as necessary in a movie of books of this epic proportions. Those that have not read the books are left in the dark as to what the rules are in this magical world and without a frame of reference, there's no way to know who's winning or who's losing. Every single thing that happens in tense moments becomes a deus ex machina.”
14. francisco said... on Aug 1, 2009 at 10:00AM
“I do not understand how people liked this movie. If you read the book you should be disappointed by the movie. This movie failed the sixth book. If you didn't read the books you would be lost in this movie, i went my with my little brother's friends 2 who didn't read the book said they didn't understand this movie. They kept asking me question about why hocruxs, why voldermort was bad, how can he talk to snakes? All these questions were answered in the book, sure this movie might encourage kids to read the books but as a successful adaptation of the book it is far off. First the key thing in the 6th book was voldemort's history, his blood relation to salazar slytherin, his path to becoming voldemort, his desire to spread evil in hogwarts was apparently all summed up by casting a creepy looking kid. The death of dumbledore was not impacting, in the 5th movie Sirus Black's death was shocking even for readers of the book. Yet dumbledore's death the culmination of the movie was a failure.”
15. Anonymous said... on Aug 3, 2009 at 06:49AM
“The film spent too much time on the tangled love lives of the young characters where it could have instead have explained some more about the 'Half-blood Prince' and it's relevance to Harry and the plot or at least about Horcruxes.
If I hadn't read the books I would have been spewing questions such as 'what does the Half-blood prince have to do with anything? Why make it the title with so little relevance to the story? Why should I care that Snape is the half blood prince?'
What the viewers gather at the end of the film is that Harry has to find these Horcruxes- it leaves out the vital issues such as WHERE SHOULD HE START? WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY?? WHAT THE HELL IS HE EVEN LOOKING FOR? WHY BOTHER AT ALL??
I hope Yates has a plan for film seven instead of just simply skimming over the vital details like he did in this film. The only things I applaud is Radcliffe's performance and the exaggeration of Lavender Brown's character in order to make her comical character.”
16. A.L. NYC said... on Aug 3, 2009 at 08:15AM
“I totally agree with this critic who obviously comprehends filmmaking and story-telling far better than some of the commentators on this thread.
Adaptation has to transform material, not literally follow it. Only the HP and Prisoner of Az...(what's it) did that in my opinion. That film was the most psychologically nuanced and cinematically expressed of all of them.
I agree with all of the points of this critic and wish I could have gotten my money back.”
17. Dan Zee said... on Aug 16, 2009 at 12:59AM
“Well, I don't think it was as bad as wanting my money back, but I'm just concerned with the cheapening of the series. There seems to be less special effects shots (no moving staircases, no ghosts), a lot less kids in the background (the school was virtually depopulated), small, claustrophobic sets, most of which left over from the previous movies, and an unremarkable musical score which added nothing to the film. There was also no feeling of wonder or magic, as there had been in the first three films. I also think Warner Bros. may have picked Peter Yates because he was cheap, rather than good.”
18. Sarah said... on Aug 19, 2009 at 09:06AM
“If I had known just how bad this film was going to be before I entered the cinema, I would'nt have bothered quite frankly.
I would rather have picked up my book again and relived it in my head as it should have been.
Where on earth was all the correspndence between the Minister of Magic and the Prime Minister?
The sheer destruction going on in the muggle world? The clear portrayal that Voldemorts power is growing and the Death eaters terrorism of muggles and the witching world?
About how vital it is that Snape is the Half Blood Prince?
and that Voledmorts horcruxes must be found and destroyed before he destroys mankind magical and muggle alike?
Biggest piece of garbage I have ever seen. I want my money back.”
19. sarah said... on Aug 19, 2009 at 09:13AM
“Oh and the school was deserted as parents were not letting their kids back to hogwarts because Voldemort and the death eaters were at large.
I think its disgusting how this has been handled, all vendors should refund the money to the customers and the screen writer should be hung.”
20. Heather said... on Aug 20, 2009 at 01:19PM
“I think the most important thing this critic wrote was-PG (to bring in more kids than the prior Potter s’ PG-13 ratings did). The books get darker the movies should. The children who started reading and seeing HP at the beginning have grown up right along with the characters. Making the movie PG was a big mistake. I think the movie actually verged on corny.
”
21. Anonymous said... on Aug 30, 2009 at 09:32PM
“I can see where you're coming from in this review. The movie was not in any sense action oriented or arc driven. However, I thought it was excellent for what it was. It's true brilliance, and the book series' as well, is the character development. The point of the movie was less how far Harry got to changing the world, but how the world changes around him--and how he changes with it.”
22. DaveC said... on Jan 13, 2010 at 11:59AM
“I'm sorry but all this stuff about not being qualified to review the movie because someone hasn't read the book is poppycock. A book is a book, and a movie is a movie - the movies should not require reading the books in order to make sense. You didn't need to read the Lord of the Rings books (for example) to follow what was happening in the movie trilogy. I haven't read the HP books (got half way through the first one and realise I just had better things to do with my time) but I have seen all of the movies. Some have worked as movies (3 and 5 in particular) the others just haven't. This one in particular has lots going on without anything actually happening and, given the title, to have the Half Blood Prince "mystery" dealt with in a single, throwaway line was ridiculous. It looks great, and the acting all around was superb but it was too long and too insubstantial to stand as a movie without the book, and that is criminal for a book adaptation.”