"Don't Call Me A Coward!" - It's my Half Blood Prince Review.
Written: Jul 15 '09
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Bang For The Buck |
 |
|
|
Pros: Visually beautiful and a straightforward telling of the core elements to the story.
Cons: Might be a bit dry for the passive viewers.
The Bottom Line: It will not please everyone but it also won't upset everyone enough to stir strong emotions either way.
|
|
|
| thepremier's Full Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince |
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - 2009
Warner Brothers
Directed by David Yates
Seeing as how I, like a great many enthusiastic Harry Potter readers and movie goers, attended the midnight showing - I was a wee bit sleepy to write this at 3:30 am. After being fully rested, I can now intelligently review it!
Let me say that there will be forced restraint in avoiding too many plot details - despite the fact that, by now, most movie watchers going to see Harry Potter at the theater have either read the books or have had the general plot explained to them by their peers that have. But I will be respectful to my Muggle readers.
I would like to first to begin in commenting that as in any cinematic translation of a book, there are elements that are tweaked or dropped. That circumstance is no difference this time, but while it can be done with the precision of a scalpel, it appears to have been done with blunt axe this time around - BUT what remained was an extremely, inexplicably streamlined and straightforward assemblage of just the essential elements of the plot. David Yates and the scriptwriters have become very adept at amending, simplifying and trimming the fat of J.K. Rowling's often rambling detail, sometimes clumsy emotional depictions, and propensity for excessive diversionary, secondary, and tertiary plot lines and quaternary characters. The essential elements to the plot of the story are the following...
- The pressing need and motivation for Professor Dumbledore to uncover the truth to the past of Lord Voldemort and to educate Harry Potter on its importance in ultimately defeating the Dark Lord.
- The developing and deepening awkward teenage romance between several main characters.
- The remarkable character development of Draco Malfoy.
- The understanding of the "macro-universe" or the "big picture". Basically that the civil war in the wizarding world is expanding and having a cataclysmic impact on the non-magical world as well.
The movie is paced extremely well given the very cerebral context of the book it was based on and it achieves these goals very well. Half Blood Prince was in many ways, an expository chapter in the Harry Potter saga that was deposited towards the end, in order to set up the climactic ending book in the series. In some cases, the movie takes things in a slightly different order than the book, and in other cases lesser characters are either ignored or extremely marginalized. The final output, however, was actually quite satisfactory.
On the whole, the movie is dark, grim, and serious. This is juxtaposed with, I should add, very well done humor - cornball and cheese are at a minimum - as well as the demented, maniacal wickedness of Bellatrix LeStrange played handsomely by the equally eccentric Helena Bodham Carter.
Lord Voldemort! This is Your Life
The story is an urgent quest by Dumbledore, who leads the only true resistance against the evil Dark Wizard, Lord Voldemort, to uncover the hidden secrets to the life and times of young Tom Riddle, Voldemort's true name, who was once a distinguished Hogwarts student himself. This is achieved through the use of memories, magically stored, which can be revisited. Dumbledore and Harry meet during the school year as Harry is shown bits and pieces of the young Tom Riddle - shown to exude extreme charm and beauty that can perhaps be described as pedophilic - a common theme throughout history that not all evil is ugly and obvious. The linchpin in confirming Dumbledore's central theory to the missing chapters of Voldemort's life and ultimately a source of great power to the Dark Lord lies within the memories of Horace Slughorn - once a teacher at Hogwarts during Tom Riddle's time as a student, whom Dumbledore manages to "bring out of retirement" at the very onset of the story, and a key element in the story is Dumbledore's employ of Harry to extract that knowledge from Slughorn by exploiting his character.
Alas, we can only witness two of the mental journeys that Harry and Dumbledore partake. They are however, extremely well done and the young actor who plays Tom Riddle is devilishly alluring in his role.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
The awkwardness of teen romantic awakening is in full steam as Harry struggles with his feelings of attraction to his best friend's sister, while Ron and Hermione's denial of each others' feelings is finally dealt with through the romantic friction caused by Lavender Brown and Cormack McLaggen. It is actually fairly well done, often amusing, and at times a bit poignant, and Emma Watson/Hermione handled her material particularly well.
The Curious Case of Draco Malfoy
One of the film's shining achievements, in my honest opinion, is the treatment of Draco Malfoy. In the book, you see, we are only "told" what he "might" be doing through the persepctive of Harry Potter and his biases and theories. However, we are treated to visually seeing, through Malfoy's own point of view - everything that is alluded to, and everything that he ends up divulging at the end. Lord Voldemort himself has given Malfoy with a serious task, you see, and in seeing him carry on we get to witness a Draco that through a combination of stress over the tenuous position his family finds itself in, his naive wishful thinking, his seemingly impossible task, and his careless ambition for power - have aged him years (not just in appearance of the actor, mind you) but in the way he speaks, moves, and acts. I was thrilled, thrilled that his character's handling and Tom Felton's treatment provoked a sense of sympathy for him from me.
Haven't You Heard There's a War On?
Just as the film visually depicted Draco's plight, the film shows in vivid horror how Voldemort's Death Eaters are spreading ruin and decay across all of Britain - magic and non magic alike. Director David Yates uses scene transitions where by pages of the newspaper "The Daily Prophet" are used in an attempt to fill in knowledge and plot gaps to the un-initiated but this is less successful than the way it was previously done in Order of the Phoenix because the political element to the story and to the war is completely lacking from the film. There is not a shred of time given to Voldemort's manipulation of the Ministry of Magic (the wizarding governing body) or in the Ministry's attempted use of Harry Potter to get at Dumbledore or further their propaganda and image motives.
Visually, this installment is I feel one of the most majestic in the series to date. The sweeping vistas, the flashbacks to Voldemort's past (even though the orphanage was a painfully obvious re-use of the Department of Mysteries set at the Ministry of Magic from the last movie), and the interesting camera angles and scene set ups at various Hogwarts locales were glorious, different, and welcome to behold.
In conclusion, I feel Half Blood Prince was a success not in its literal devotion to the material, but for cutting through a lot of remarkably expository material for so late in a saga and for getting straight to the emotions underneath the vast information dealt with in the story. Fans of the book will enjoy it more than other viewers probably only because it is far less action oriented than previous installments. This is Harry Potter for the thinking fan. Don't get me wrong, there are several tense scenes of dueling, spell casting, and the Quiditch scenes are the tightest yet - but most passive Harry Potter viewers will probably wonder what the big deal is by the time the movie ends. The film doesn't really end - I compare it to the "ending" of The Empire Strikes Back - our characters are left shaken and hurt, but still determined.
Random Awards:
Most Improved Acting - Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy)
Newest Potter teen heart throb - that guy that plays Cormack
Most Egregious character marginalization - Tonks
Most head-scratching omissions in lieu of Book 7 events - Kreacher and Dobby, Fleur Delacour and Bill Weasly's entire relationship, and the decay of the Ministry of Magic.
Consistent Scene Stealer Award - Alan Rickman as Severus Snape as usual - and disappointingly not enough Minerva McGonnagall!
Because epinions demands I give it a star rating, I give it a 3 but my enjoyment of the film transcends that, which is balanced only by my over devotedness to the book. The movie is a satisfactory balance - had it been given any more weight of detail it would have collapsed under the monotony and drudgery. Movies should not be forced to be slaved into getting everything on screen from the book - the movie should visually and emotionally flow through the key elements of the story - for which, I feel strongly enough to recommend the movie.
Happy viewing.
The Premier
Epinions - July 2009
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Serious Movie
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
thepremier
|
|
Member: Constantinos Kolios
Location: Rochester, New York
Reviews written: 99
Trusted by: 36 members
About Me:
Hello people.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.