By OpalCat

tags: adventure, fantasy, movie review

Rated:
Director: David Yates
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon…
Summary: As Harry Potter begins his 6th year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he discovers an old book marked mysteriously “This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince” and begins to learn more about Lord Voldemort’s dark past…
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Review: [Warning: contains spoilers!] It must be said that it was a lot of book to try to pack into one movie (which is why, while it means an annoying wait, I’m glad they have decided to do the last book as two movies). Even at nearly three hours it was still going to be missing a lot of things no matter what they did. However, there were so many elements removed (and characters—no Dursleys at all, for example) that most fans of the books would consider critical that I doubt most die-hard fans of the written series will enjoy the film very much. They also changed some things from the book that made no logical sense to me. For example, Harry was completely free to act and was watching the entire time when Dumbledore is killed. Now, you tell me… would Harry have just let that happen without trying to help, even if he’d been told to buzz off? I had a hard time swallowing it. Additionally, there was no emotional punch to that scene—quite unlike the book. Even when I’ve seen a movie before, if a scene made me cry the first time, it will probably make me cry the second, third, etc. as well. The build-up to that scene was a let down as well, and after the deed was done, all the baddies just sort of wandered away like nothing had happened. The movie had no real climax like the book did.

I’m not sure how someone who hadn’t read the book would follow the movie. I don’t know that the plot would fully make sense with how much they left out. (For one thing, the whole “half-blood prince issue” was hardly touched on, so most people who hadn’t read the book would probably be confused as to why that was important enough to be the title.) I agree with several other reviews I’ve read that say they sacrificed important elements of the plot in order to throw in more comedy moments. I’m also unsure of how they’re going to do things for the last book, given that a lot of things that were set up in this book as necessary background for the final book were not in the movie.

For all of the elements that were left out, there were quite a few bits of the movie that seemed overdone. Ron’s romantic relationship scenes were too many and too long, there is a seemingly unending scene of running through corn fields (corn? Dunno—some tall crop), and the scene in the cave, for as exciting and suspenseful as it needed to be, somehow seemed to drag on and on. Couldn’t they have cut some of that (either by not doing it or by making the scenes tighter) and stuck some of the more important bits of the plot into that time?

There was a funny moment when a woman a few rows behind me freaked out. I’m guessing she hadn’t read the book and wasn’t very good at figuring out foreshadowing, because when Harry touched the water and the hand reached out and grabbed him, she not only jumped a little (as did everyone in the theater—standard “startle” reaction even if you know it’s coming) but she screamed and nearly jumped out of her chair. In fact I think she did stand up. Then she kept going on and on “oh my god! oh my god!” and wouldn’t shut up for a good 2-3 minutes.

I was more impressed with the acting abilities of Dan and Emma than with Rupert’s, but I think that may have been more the fault of the director. Ron-in-love just came across as goofy and put-on to me. The effects were quite good, I thought, but there wasn’t nearly as much magic in this movie as in the previous ones. I was a little surprised at how scary some of the scary stuff was, considering it was only PG. I can see kids getting freaked out and having nightmares about parts of this movie, for sure. I was also surprised that the rating wasn’t bumped to PG-13 for the more adult themes this movie had.

I was left confused, in the end, and not sure whether I enjoyed the movie or not. I was entertained by it, overall, but there were times I was bored as well. I was annoyed by not seeing certain scenes that I’d been looking forward to, but I was also impressed with the sets, costumes, effects, and all of the things that they did do. I thought they overdid Ron’s parts, but then I also thought several of them were funny. Overall I’d have to say I don’t know how I feel about this movie!

— 10:06:55 PM
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