Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I have to be honest. I liked Twilight more. I find it very unlikely that Twilight is a better book, and certainly won’t believe it’s the better series, but I actually preferred the film to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. HP6 was by no means the worst of the Potter films - I seriously doubt we’ll get a worse film than Chamber of Secrets in the franchise, but book six was amongst the worst, and many of the parts that redeemed it slightly were absent. While the kids playing Tom Riddle were probably the best child actors in the series and outshone the performances of the stars by very, very large margins, sadly Voldemort’s history was reduced to just a couple of scenes, with no insight into how his family life affected him. Gone were all the flashback scenes with Snape and the Marauders that brought shades of grey to backstories, scenes I didn’t realise added so much to the overall plot until they were gone. Those scenes would’ve actually given some weight to the title, here rendered next to meaningless. The end part, where Hogwarts is compromised, which of anything ought to have been the part that was stretched out, giving the film a strong climax, was rushed, so that powerful Death Eaters make it into the heart of the enemy’s stronghold, get in an extremely strong position where they could kidnap and murder whoever they pleased…and then do nothing by watch Snape do what he has to do, perform some petty vandalism and bugger off. There was no sense of them being forced to retreat or any reason not to kidnap Harry, making their presence in Hogwarts somewhat arbitrary. The fact Harry wasn’t petrified also significantly changed the dynamic.

And for what? This was a very long film, so why was the ending rushed? What was so important to make room for that meant Marvolo, the Ministry and Harry’s special lessons with Snape had to be cut? Well, I’m sorry to say…nothing that strikes me as having been wisely-chosen. A new scene was added where the Weasleys’ house gets randomly attacked, the Death Eaters’ motives highly questionable, wasting their element of surprise and the strong position they have for…well, the sake of posing, apparently. Apart from that, it was all the soap opera crap that made the last two books such tedium and made Nessie gleefully announce she was going to see ‘the rom com of the year’. Hermione acting like a hypocrite and total drama queen (phone guy behind us did make us giggle when he saw her killing conjured-up birds and mumbling, ‘She’s a murderer…!’, Harry being insufferably awkward and wooden, Ron being extraneous and Ginny looking bored to be in the film at all. While it was merciful that protracted parts of the book like the Quidditch story with the luck potion, Slughorn’s little club and the question of who takes who to a party were dealt with briskly, all of them together made for a middle act that sagged horribly, with no driving impetus or actual motivation for Harry’s actions beyond ‘try to get a memory from Slughorn’.

I am a fan of Jim Broadbent and few actors have deserved the Oscar they got more than he did for Iris, but he was just too likeable and sympathetic as Slughorn. Too bad Richard Griffiths had already been cast as Uncle Vernon, because I imagine Slughorn as almost exactly like Monty in Withnail and I. Broadbent is just not repulsive!

One complaint persists from the last film, too, which is really a problem with Rowling’s plotlines. In Goblet of Fire, Voldemort returns to life and glory, killing mercilessly. The Dark Lord has returned, and will bring death and destruction to the Wizarding World. He then proceeds to spend a year…causing so few problems that almost no-one believes he’s back, picking on a few stray randomers and trying to get hold of a prophecy. And what does he do the year after that? Bugger all! Sends his minions to turn the Millennium Bridge into some very bad CG and trashes an alley full of shops. Then at the very end of the year manages to arrange for a powerful wizard to be killed.

He’s a dark lord with an army of powerful and merciless soldiers – why does he piddle about doing almost nothing for two entire years so that Harry can get giggly about girls? Ugh. Well, I suppose I do have to remember that the core audience for the books was teenaged girls and young women, almost exclusively by the time book six came out. It’s not surprising the focus shifted to relationships and school drama. But that doesn’t mean I like it.

So yeah, I was disappointed by the story, by the adaptation, by the acting, by the pacing and even by the effects. That said, there was one rather splendid fire effect towards the end…but unfortunately it was a little marred by how unavoidable it was to think that Gandalf and Gollum were making cameo appearances.