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Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince

July 18th, 2009 - 11:06pm // Reviews, Reviews - Flicks

I’ll begin by letting you know that this review contains scads of hardcore, unapologetic spoilers concerning Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince [HBP]. If you’ve read the books, then nothing in here should shock you. Otherwise, continue at your own peril.

I won’t beat around the bush here – I disliked the film adaptation of HBP. While I estimate I’ve read the corresponding novel at least three times, I honestly can’t see myself sitting through another two and a half hours of saccharine tripe that should’ve been called Harry Potter & the Half-Finished Script.

This is Saturday morning, back-of-the-cereal-box Harry Potter lite. Someone in charge made a command decision that this movie should be rated PG (almost assuredly for licensing opportunities) and, as a result, you’re left with a watered-down movie that was censored into oblivion. As you’re probably well aware, the culmination of the novel was near the end when Professor Snape lobs a death spell at Dumbledore and smotes his ruin upon the countryside. This should have been the absolute high point of the movie, with Harry frozen and impotent under his invisibility cloak while the Death Eaters rage through Hogwarts, slaying anyone who gets in their way as they escape. I can remember being unable to put the book down while reading through to the end – completely rapt in Rowling’s spell. The movie could’ve merely mirrored this section of the book line-by-line and scene-for-scene and it would’ve given a much-needed dose of excitement into the final scenes. Instead, they opted to show a brief glimpse of Dumbledore being hurled off the balcony, followed by the Death Eaters rampaging through a conspicuously empty dining hall, then setting fire to Hagrid’s empty house, and swiftly attended by a scene involving every Hogwarts student standing in the courtyard with Dumbledore’s broken body and holding their wands aloft in mournful tribute… What the fuck?!

It struck me as odd when I first read the news that HBP would be rated PG. Both Goblet of Fire [GoF] and Order of the Phoenix were PG-13. And not due to Hollywood injections of gratuitous danger and violence, either – it fit with both the tone and the scope of both books. Starting with GoF, Rowling’s series concerning a certain boy wizard takes a dark turn – but a turn that rings true with the story she built. From day one, Harry has been fated to deliver the death stroke to He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and Rowling weaves many fatalistic themes throughout her books which, up to this point, have been faithfully translated in the earlier films. But not HBP.

This movie is supremely condescending in its desire to hold your hand and beat you over the head with scenes that existed as hints and subtle nuance in the book. Do we really need to see Malfoy stoically crying on balconies and hallways in every other frame to see that he is conflicted over his secret orders from Voldemort? What about the vanishing cabinet? In the book, it was a surprise completely out of left-field to learn that Malfoy was secretly experimenting with the cabinet in order to eventually use it for smuggling Death Eaters into Hogwarts. But the movie insists on introducing the cabinet early on and employs numerous montages of Malfoy’s efforts to get it working. This is script-writing at its laziest.

The novel was rife with romantic themes, which are then awkwardly wrestled on to the silver screen. Some relationships – between Tonks and Remus, for example – were abruptly dropped into the audience’s collective lap, with nary a hint of foreshadowing or, more regrettably, context as to how or why they started seeing eachother. Others – such as the impending nuptials of rebellious Bill Weasley and the seductive Fleur Delacour – were never mentioned at all in the film. This, in particular, mystified me since Fleur played a rather strong counterpoint to stiff-collared Hermione in Goblet of Fire and her engagement – to a Weasley, of all people – laid the groundwork for the romantic angst that ensues throughout the majority of the Half-Blood Prince. Too much time is spent on mundane teenage flirtations between Harry and Ginny instead of passages from the book that are actually interesting.

Let’s be honest – at a very basic level, movies must evoke interest, surprise, admiration, fear, laughter – something. HBP contains hours of build-up and backstory with no climax – evoking nothing but a yawn and the occasional thought of how full your bladder is after downing that 64oz Mountain Dew. No cinema sin is more egregious than a movie that doesn’t grip your interest and hold it from beginning to end. And in this regard, Half-Blood Prince is the veritable antichrist.