It was a mixed group of us who went to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Part 1). Some of us were die-hard fans of the books, some of us die-hard fans of the movies and had never read the book and some of us just wanted to watch an interesting movie. And not one of us liked it.
I just love the HP books and have been time and again moderately disappointed by the movie versions simply because they don’t always capture some of the essential details of the story line. But I get that’s the limitation of making a 120-minute movie.
However, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is so far away from the actual novel that you wonder if David Yates had even bothered to read the book. And how on earth did JKR allow this to be screened?
Movie Poster Courtesy Wikipedia
So what happens to Harry Potter?
The story gets darker as Lord Voldemort has risen and the unstoppable death eaters now cause havoc throughout England. Harry has been declared as the Chosen One and the pressure on him to protect the wizarding world is even higher. Draco Malfoy also has chosen his side and its apparent that he is working under the orders of the Dark Lord, but what exactly are those orders?
Meanwhile, Professor Dumbledore and Harry work together to find that one weakness of Voldemort that can help in destroying him. An important new character in the movie is Professor Horace Slughorn, the new potions master, who is the only one who possesses the secret to Voldemort’s immortality.
Sounds action packed , right?
Wrong. What could have been the darkest movie of all is instead a frothy angsty teenage romance movie. Urgh! The main themes mentioned above are given moments of fleeting importance. Most of the time only watch and suffer the hormonal changes that our favorite trio ( Harry, Ron, Hermione ) go through.
What is really frustrating is that not only has Yates taken away the meat of the 6th book – Voldemort’s history, the fight between the death-eaters and Order of Phoenix, the grand funeral of Dumbledore, but has added scenes that we could have done without. The inane Lavender Brown romancing Ron, Ginny tying Harry’s shoelaces (WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT), the stupid smirking and snogging by Hogwarts’s students – yes we know they are getting older and horny, but do you really want to spend 1 hour of the precious movie running time on that??
Enough said. Even if you had not read the book, there is very little in the movie to watch maybe except for maybe the performances.
Daniel Radcliffe is definitely maturing to be an above average actor though he still struggles with the emotional scenes. Emma Watson is convincing as usual and Rupert Grint as Ron is hilarious and fits his role to a T. Bonnie Wright as Ginny Weasely is boring. Jim Broadbent is a delight as Professor Slughorn and the rest of the teacher’s team perfect.
Verdict
Yuck. It made me want to go back and read HP series once again just to remind myself why it was a good thing.
And I am not being biased – do check out another review by Silver Mists on this movie.
4 comments
And some went to watch Hermoine!!
Oh yes the movie completely sucked big time. Any reviewer giving this movie more than 2 stars on a scale of 5 must have been bribed.
I quite agree its totally bad and boring. No justice done to the book et all. Worse still are those weird scenes that pop out of nowhere and aren’t even there in the book!
Sometimes I feel like going for a movie just to see how bad can it actually be..
Im sure Ill watch HP for the same reason..
Kapil – even Hermoine couldnt save this movie!
Zoya- I completely agree with you on those totally unnecessary scenes – what were they thinking
Priyanka – welcome to the blog! and yes if you love Harry Potter and will only believe anything till you try it for urself 🙂