Directed by David Yates

One of the complaints about the fanbase of a book (or book series) being adapted to film is that the fans can be a bit too obsessive when it comes to how their beloved reading material is translated to the big screen. So I’ll preface this review by noting that I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter book series and have read all of the books several times; I’ve taken my kids to every book-release party and early midnight Harry Potter screening. We even bought them over-priced (but very cool) wands when the last book came out. And I’ve liked all the Harry Potter films, even Goblet of Fire, which is the least-favorite Harry Potter film of most of the folks I know. Generally speaking, I like to think that I’ve been pretty open-minded concerning all the Harry Potter films. Until now.

Along with Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is one of my two favorite books in the series. This is the point at which things start to get darker and more serious. There’s more strategizing and philosophical struggling, as Voldemort and Harry each grow in power and move ever closer toward their inevitable final confrontation. Oh, sure, Harry, our boy wizard, with the help of his pals Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), has been battling Voldemort since he was just a little kid in Sorceror’s Stone, but it’s only after Goblet of Fire that nefarious plans of the evil wizard formerly known as Tom Riddle really start to come together in a way that leaves the wizarding and Muggle worlds hanging in the balance, with nothing but this flawed-but-brave, bespectacled boy and a handful of friends in the way of certain doom.

Throughout the series, we’ve seen hints of a dark side in Harry — a side foreshadowed when the Sorting Hat pondered placing him in Slytherin House rather than Gryffindor in the first book. Harry’s wand contains the twin of the phoenix feather in Voldemort’s wand. Harry holds grudges. He obsesses about his enemies, and questions the loyalty and motivations of his friends. He is, as Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) has noted repeatedly, not above lying or skirting the rules to get his way, and in Half-Blood Prince he blatantly cheats, using the scribbles in the margins of a used potions book to bolster his own grade and reputation in Potions class.

He’s even — and perhaps this is where he’s most like his father, who was in many ways not quite the hero Harry had always imagined him to be — not above using an unexplained spell in his mysterious potions book —  labeled only  “for enemies” — on one of his own enemies, without any idea what that spell might do. In the bok, Harry faces serious consequences for this choice and agonizes over it later; in the movie, it’s shoved aside and given nary a second thought. Huge mistake — Harry’s willingness to use this spell foreshadows the ruthlessness that will see him through the last book, and by positioning it as relatively unimportant here, a pivotal moment in Harry’s ethical development is cast aside as nothing but a minor plot point.

The Half-Blood Prince is where Draco Malfoy’s (Tom Felton) character gets a long-awaited pivotal turn.  Draco has been Harry’s nemesis at Hogwarts since day one, and the shift in his character arc is one of the most interesting things about Half-Blood Prince (and, later, in The Deathly Hallows). This is one thing the film gets right, and Felton does a great job conveying the conflict and anguish in Malfoy as he faces his greatest challenge: is he as evil as the father he’s tried so hard to live up to, as bad as everyone expects him to be? Or is there something within him that’s not yet beyond all hope?

Generally speaking, director David Yates (who also directed Order of the Phoenix) gets most of the character things right in Half-Blood Prince — this book is very heavy on the teenage angst stuff, and Yates does keep the focus mostly on the kids, which is as it should be. Harry, Ron and Hermione are who they should be at this point in the series: older, a bit wiser, but still kids and prone to crushes and grudges and peer pressure and occasionally caring more about the pretend battle of Quidditch than the very real, very adult war facing them. All three lead actors are solid, and one of the most enjoyable things about this series has been watching them grow and mature in their performances.

Yates gets the visual look right as well; the film looks fantastic, its gloomy, muted, grey-brown palette setting the tone of the decidely dark story. Everything looks forboding, cloaked in an aura of fear and growing despair. All things considered, this should be a great movie — there’s an excellent story to work from, characters we know well and love, a screenwriter and director who should know what they’re doing; we, like Harry at the beginning when Professor Dumblecore unexpectedly introduces him to apparating, should be able to just go along for the ride and enjoy — or at least accept — where it takes us. So it’s too bad that the flaws in the film keep it from being as good as it should be.

Unfortunately, this film is horribly weighed down by clunky, awkward pacing — surprising, given that the script is by Steve Kloves, who’s written every other Harry Potter screenplay except for Order of the Phoenix. There are times in the first two-thirds or so of the film where the story plods along so slowly that I grew impatient with it — enough so to have time to ponder whether someone who’s less familiar with the source material might enjoy it more for not knowing how much better and engaging it should be. There’s lots of material in the book to cull from, heaps of smaller conflicts that build up to a big, pivotal final battle scene, and the immense emotional release that should follow. Inexplicably, some of the most crucial moments from the last couple chapters of the book simply don’t make it into the movie at all.

Instead, Yates and Kloves give us another scene midway through the film that never happens in the book, and the ending of this scene kind of bugged the hell out of me, as it takes a considerable liberty that I was a bit surprised author JK Rowling would allow. But that was nothing compared to how I felt about the hugely anticlimatic finale, which left me staring dumbfounded at the screen thinking, “What the hell was THAT?” And I can’t tell you much more than that without giving away a huge spoiler, but the way Yates handles the film’s final moments changes the tone and tenor of the end of this story as it moves toward the final book in a way that surprised me — and not at all in a good way.

Look, there’s a lot to like in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The actors are all solid and I like all the main cast (well, with the exception of Michael Gambon as Dumbledore … I’ve never been head-over-heels about him), but the story as a whole feels oddly cobbled together, and the ending feels like they either ran out of money, time or both to do the scene as it should have been done. Yates could have excised that ill-advised mid-story scene entirely (it just feels like an excuse to give a certain actress more screen time, anyhow), tightened up a good 20 minutes of pacing elsewhere, and had the finale the story needs and deserves.

Instead, we’re left with this bleak, half-baked ending that left me sitting there with dashed expectations about the whole thing. It’s too bad, and it makes me worry about how the two-part adaptation of the series’ final book (in which there is a LOT of talking and walking around and hiding in forests from the bad guys) will be. Hopefully, Yates will get it together and pull of a better wrap-up with the last book than this half-hearted Half-Blood Prince. The magic, unfortunately, just isn’t completely there this time.

-by Kim Voynar

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