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Grossing over $220 million in its first two weeks, the much anticipated sixth installment in the Harry Potter movie series took a commanding position in theaters in July. The film arrived several months later than originally planned, and fans of the fictional wizard prodigy flocked to see their favorite characters again grace the silver screen in the adaptation of J.K. Rowling's best-selling book.
Sadly, the anticipation gave way to disappointment for many. Despite its two and a half hour length, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince failed to even come close to living up to the book, or to audience expectations.
As in the previous films, the stars delivered convincing performances as the characters inhabiting Hogwart's School and Rowling's fictional version of modern England. Even though the main characters, all teen-agers in the story, are being played by now-adult performers, they still manage to fit the youthful roles well. Jim Broadbent joins the cast as Professor Horace Slughorn, and plays the grandfatherly potions instructor well. Alan Rickman reprises his role as the nearly perfect embodiment of Severus Snape (one might wonder if Rowling wrote the character originally with Rickman in mind, as exceptionally as the actor fits the part), though the movie truncates the role Snape plays in this installment dramatically.
Indeed, this is one of the main problems with this screenplay: while the book delves into a sub-plot involving the mysterious "Half-Blood Prince" mentioned in the borrowed potions textbook Harry Potter uses, the movie gives just enough hint of this theme to keep the audience from wondering why on Earth the movie is titled for it. In her book, Rowling keeps the reader guessing as to the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, even as Harry finds terrific information in the hand-written notes left by the unknown student in the text book. This expertise leads the Potter character to try and ferret out who this wizard was, but this point is just barely presented in the movie.
Instead, the movie focuses far more on the romantic foibles of the maturing characters. While this was also a plot point in the book, it was far less important for the story than either the Half-Blood Prince or the insights into the nemesis Voldemort presented in the book. There are a few more scenes flashing back to Voldemort's boyhood, though not nearly so many as in the book. Granted, even with an additional half-hour or more, the movie could not have thoroughly covered all that the book did; still, to waste as much screen time on snogging teen-agers as they did was a poor decision at best.
The wizarding effects in the film are again nicely done, as are the sets and costuming. The production values are top-notch, as always, and I found the movie a visual delight. This was not enough, though, to offset the parts where the movie started to drag. Terrific imagery should augment a scene, not carry it, but it seemed this is what was hoped would happen.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is also available in 3-D. One comment posted by someone who saw it in 3-D was that the 3-D effects were only prominent in the first half-hour, and noticeably sparse in the remainder of the film. I think I would have been a bit miffed to wear 3-D glasses for two and a half hours, just for thirty minutes of 3-D viewing.
Overall, I still enjoyed the movie, but not as much as previous installments in the series where the films gave much more of the meat of the plot. I walked out thinking the film should have been titled, Harry Potter and the Raging Teen Hormones, and not feeling eager for another viewing. Hopefully, the screenwriters for the final two Harry Potter films (book 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is going to be split into two movies) will do a better job producing solid screenplays that represent the story well.
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