(Contains spoilers for anyone who’s still not aware of the major plotlines of the book.)
Solid but often workmanlike, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince feels as though everyone involved wanted to get through with it and focus on the grand finale – the two-part Deathly Hallows, now being filmed. It’s a decent film, and yet there’s a restrained quality to it, as though director, actors, and crew alike are saving up the really good stuff for the big finish.
The film is directed by David Yates, who was responsible for the stunning Order of the Phoenix, easily the best of the Harry Potter movies so far. The Half-Blood Prince shares that film’s sculptural feel and the rainy-day quality of its lighting, but it simply doesn’t wow the way Phoenix did. It lacks its predecessor’s great set pieces (the denouement in the Ministry of Magic comes to mind) and its moments of throwaway beauty (Harry and friends flying past Parliament at night, mirrored in the Thames River below).
The film suffers from the same problem the book did: both mainly serve as exposition for the final showdown. But, while Rowling’s command of suspense kept the pages flying in the novel, the filmed Half-Blood Prince often feels slow, especially in its first hour. A confrontation between Harry and two Death Eaters at the Burrow, which does not appear in the book, helps to liven things up a bit, but viewers who aren’t that interested in the translation from page to screen might find themselves longing for more action.
Teen angst hits Harry and Hermoine.
Much of the plot, in fact, is concerned with the Ron-Lavender-Hermoine and Harry-Ginny-Dean love triangles. The (thoroughly PG-rated) teen romances are sweet, but often seem trivial against the backdrop of a looming Wizarding World War. Jessie Cave never quite hits the right note as Lavender Brown – her character winds up being just plain annoying, rather than humorously annoying, as she is in the book, and Cave can’t even manage a convincing scowl at rival Hermoine. Bonnie Wright is fine as Ginny, and the core trio are fine, too, though, as in previous films, they are overshadowed by their supporting cast. Radcliffe’s Potter is so inoffensive that he borders on the gormless. He’s nice, likeable, and, well, utterly average.
Now coming to an English department near you.
Much more interesting is the excellent Jim Broadbent as Professor Slughorn. Anyone who’s ever spent any time in an English department will recognize Slughorn: he’s that effete, tweedy professor who makes favorites of the apple-polishers and goes about speaking in literary allusions. Broadbent turns Slughorn from the little more than a caricature he was in the book to a pompous, self-satisfied, but oddly vulnerable character. There’s a great moment where he’s reminiscing about a present from Harry’s mom Lily, one of his old students, “a bowl holding about three inches of clear water, upon which floated a single flower petal. As I watched the petal sank to the bottom of the bowl where it became . . . a little fish! What a beautiful piece of magic.” Broadbent doesn’t just read these lines; somehow he remembers them, delight welling up in his eyes, as if he sees the bowl and the fish before him.
The Half-Blood Prince contains several of these tender little moments: Harry comforting Hermoine after she sees Ron and Lavender together; Ron’s joy at finally getting to be the hero of the big Quidditch match; Professor McGonagall lifting her wand to the skies to dispel the Dark Mark in the clouds after Dumbledore’s death. And, on the darker side, Tom Felton invests Draco Malfoy with depth and palpable inner conflict, while Helena Bonham Carter is once again gleefully mad as Bellatrix Lestrange, and Dave Legano, only onscreen for a few seconds, promises to be a feral Fenrir Greyback. These bits and pieces are far more moving than the film’s marquee moments but they’re still not enough to lift The Half-Blood Prince to greatness. It’s a solid, if not spectacular, addition to the franchise; fans won’t be disappointed, but they’ll still have cause to hope for better things once the Deathly Hallows movies hit theatres.
