Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Review (NERD ALERT!)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 11:59PM 
[sigh]
This is not going to be easy. As a long-time Harry Potter evangelist, I've got to confess... there is good news, and there is bad news. I reviewed this in two parts the first is more warm and fuzzy for those of you who don't want to believe this movie has flaws.
Here is my "good news" review:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is finally here! The same old cast returns with some pretty great additions (Freddie Stroma as Cormac McLeggan and Jim Broadbent as Professor Slughorn) for their sixth year at Hogwarts. Voldemort is alive and well - as are his Death Eater buddies, who are causing serious trouble for wizards and muggles alike.
We left HP in Order of the Phoenix just after he learned of the prophecy told at the time of his birth ("neither can live while the other survives" or something like that). HBP picks up a few weeks later. Dark times for wizards. Everyone is in danger.
The Half-Blood Prince (the book) does a masterful job setting up the dramatic, tragic, perfectly-woven conclusion to this series. The Half-Blood Prince (the movie) does not... see why below.
The acting is greatly improved in this movie, though. Dan Radcliffe is flexing his chops. One scene in particular (when he downs some Liquid Luck) stands out, proving he has started taking his craft quite seriously.
Jim Broadbent is also a fantastic addition. I was amazed by his performance. Professor Slughorn is a tricky role to play, and Broadbent definitely delivered the disguised regret necessary to pull off the character.
That at least gives me hope for Deathly Hallows.
Visually the film is stunning. Even when you're pissed about the s**tty script choices, you'll have something pretty to look at.
That's the end of my good review. If you don't wanna hear the bad news, then stop reading now!
****SPOILER ALERT! PLOT SPOILERS FROM HERE FORWARD!****
For HP book fans, however, this movie will be like eating a giant cheeseburger that leaves you starving.
Unfortunately for serious book fans, HBP eliminates some of (what I think are) the most crucial character development storylines. Specifically, the entire flashback series of Voldemort's mother, father, love potion, orphanage thing isn't even mentioned. Also, the actual "half-blood prince" potions book plotline is barely developed.
These two sub-plots provide details that not only enhance Snape and Voldemort as characters, but give deep insight into their emotional struggles. These stories tell us why Snape and Voldemort are who they are. Without those details, their some of their actions make no sense to filmgoers who haven't read the books.
It feels like the filmmakers took the easiest path. They picked out the most marketable movie moments from HBP (the book) - teenage lust, quidditch, cool magic special effects - to create a cash cow. But the way they've done it gives birth to a Swiss cheese-style flick. Also, the way they put these major moments together makes the two-part finale (Deathly Hallows) completely predictable.
I guess the book fans are supposed to spend an hour explaining the missing details (WTF are those people in the water? Why did HP freak out when he touched that ring? Wait so Ginny and Harry...? Why did Snape make the unbreakable vow if he isn't on the dark side?) to their friends who care about understanding the plot in full.
****MAJOR SPOILER ALERT****
My final beef is with the Dumbledore death scene. WTF were they thinking here?
In the book, Harry is defenseless when Snape avada kedavra's Dumbledore. He is under his invisibility cloak and Dumbledore has paralyzed him. He couldn't do anything to stop Dumbledore's death, even if people knew he was there.
In the movie, he stands silently under the floor and watches the whole thing happen after Snape finds him and tells him to shush up.
I call serious bullsh*t on that. No way would HP stand quietly and watch his mentor get zapped by the Death Eaters. No f**king way. HP is not the kind of hero who would allow that to happen.
The only reason he doesn't do anything in the book is because he physically can't. HP isn't going to b**tch out because Helena Bonham Carter has her wand drawn with her hair all bat-sh*t crazy. Sorry. Not buying it.
Sorry that I have high expectations, but you can successfully adapt a detailed sci-fi book to the big screen (Lord of the Rings).
OK, now that you know, feel free to tell me I'm wrong in the comments.
Whitney Mathews
I'm not the only one who feels this way! Watch Eric and HP lover JD from Scene-Stealers reiterate my points. Read Eric's text review, too, though be warned... his is much more scathing than mine.
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Reader Comments (8)
Having not seen the film, your review seems to confirm a lot of what I thought wouldn't work for the film. Granted, this is a case where I really think J.K. Rowling is at fault rather than the filmmakers. I doesn't surprise me that the "'half-blood prince' potions book plotline is barely developed because, well, that plotline is barely developed in Rowling's book. All we get from that revelation is, shock, Snape is a morally ambiguous character, which is the same impression we had from the previous installments. I'm hearing complaints that the filmmakers foreground the teen romantic comedy. Well, that's because Rowling herself foregrounded the teen romantic comedy, to awkward and inorganic effect. The way you describe the Astronomy Tower scene seems to actually be an improvement over what occurs in the books. I just found the whole Harry being petrified device to be incredibly contrived. IMO "Half Blood Prince" is by far the worst and most out-of-place of the books. It's just bad luck that, as the filmmakers have gotten better at adapting the Harry Potter books over the years, the Harry Potter books have gotten worse.
We've had a lot of debates in our office over the past few days, and I think the feeling is HBP is a transitional step that only functions to set up the finale.
I hope they address some of these detail issues in the two-part Deathly Hallows.
I'll have to disagree with your take that HBP was worst of the series. It's plays an important part in developing the adult characters and helping the teenagers mature. Of the hundreds of pages in HBP, the teen rom/com thing didn't stand out to me as much as the history that led the story to this point. We could argue Dumbledore's death scene til the end of time. I find his paralysis and invisibility necessary, but I can understand the other side of the argument.
The Movie was great.. there lots of improvement in score and effects... but unfortunately, i was disappointed with some of the scenes in the book were not shown in the movie... i do agree that there is lack of showing some information in the movie like ...(WTF are those people in the water? Why did HP freak out when he touched that ring? Wait so Ginny and Harry...? Why did Snape make the unbreakable vow if he isn't on the dark side?)...
well... even though i was quite disappointed with the movie, im still a fan of Harry Potter...
and excited of what will happen on the last two movies... i hope that in the last two movie, there will be no tragic change of story... lol... and im hoping that they will do their very best to do and portrait what really the book told us... and i won't expect too much on the last 2 movies so that it will lessen the feeling of bitterness . . . lol....
Well i do still love the STORY made by JK.. but i hope, JK won't let the film makers change soooo much on the last two movies.... she should defend what she made/wrote...(book)...
PS: lol
........... there should be some panic scenes in the castle when the death eaters are entering the school..... as far as i can remmber, the book tell us that while they were having a small conference at the tower, some aurors are fighting with the death eaters at the grounds... am i right? lol... (actually i love that scene...) hehehehe
@ AJ?...WTF?the books just kept getting better ok?
and yeah i agree completely with the review.i was very disappointed.i went with a friend who'd never read the books and after the movie,i had to explain the entire story to him... that's how incomplete the movie was.
Dumbledore was one the greatest wizards ever and one of my most favorite characters so for him to not have a funeral was just way too insulting for me.he deserved one and a beautiful one at that.the book did that wonderfully.
and the horcrux memories???where are they???
i HATE HATE HATE David Yates...he's the worst HP director ever.i want Alfonso Cuaron or even Mike Newell back...or even Chris Columbus.
i hope JKR wakes up to the fact that her life's work is being butchered and thrown to the vultures
Wow guys - totally agree. I want Alfonso Cuaron back! POA was my favorite movie.
Thanks for leaving your comments, guys! Keep them coming. I'd like to hear from a book fan who liked the movie.
like what i had mentioned above, i do still love the movie... according to my media friends, it is still good to have changes from the book to the movie so that the book readers will be able to see new events or scenes... yeah, they were right but from the HBP, it seems that it was like a car that was overhauled... lol....
"More troubling to Potterites, the ending is markedly different from the book. Gone is the Battle at Hogwarts and Dumbledore's funeral, which is perhaps the most moving passage of the entire series. Director David Yates defended the changes, pointing out that the end of the final book also features a full-scale assault on the world's most famous magic academy, so a second one would feel redundant. Dumbledore's funeral reportedly just didn't fit with the tone of the movie, so it was cut. Rumor has it that the scene might be added to the beginning of the next movie in the series "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I," which is scheduled to open in November of 2010. "
that was a part of an article from Yahoo movie...
i do hope that on the deathly hallows part one, they will include the 2 scenes that were cut in the HBP movie... it is still good to start the new movie with the end part of the previous... but hopefully, it should be more detailed and the BATTLE AT HOGWARTS should be included... that made the movie 6 bitter.. lol
Thank you, thank you, thank you Whitney! Finally, a review that points out all the missteps that were taken in this C- adaptation of the sixth book in the Harry Potter series. I was so excited to see this film because of the important and DRAMATIC revelations in the book that lead to the painful-to-read scene in which Harry must force Dumbledore to drink the poison at the cave, followed by the bone-chilling sight of the Death Mark over Hogwarts, building to the first-ever full-scale breach and battle inside Hogwarts, and finally, the "NO THAT CANNOT BE TRUE THAT SNAPE JUST KILLED DUMBLEDORE" scream inside my, and every reader's head. Just writing that got my adrenaline pumping, but when I left the movie, I was depressed, not because I just watched Dumbledore fall from the clock tower (made me cry when I read the book), but because the tension, raw emotion and sadness was not conveyed or handled properly in this worst installment of the series.
I agree whole-heartedly Whitney with your break down of what did, and sadly the greater, did not work in the film. As a die-hard lover of the books, I have enjoyed the movies thus far. Sure there are elements in every one of the films that could have been improved, but overall I feel that, given the immensely rich and DENSE material, each director, and the two separate screenwriters, did a fine job in staying true to the Harry Potter world. Not with the HBP. The fact that Steve Kloves was back writing the screenplay is baffling considering his past success in honoring the source material for the first 4 installments. We can only hope that J.K. Rowling feels the same way and steps up and shouts, "Put away your re-writes, YOU BITCH! You...will...never...mess with my book AGAIN.”