Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Pants (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (DVD))

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (DVD)
Date:	30/07/09 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Special effects, performances, only one more book to go

Disadvantages: A mess of backstory

Once again, the Harry Potter hype machine promised us that this would be the darkest year yet at Hogwarts. And, once again, everyone was too polite to point out that they've been saying this since _Chamber of Secrets_ came out several years ago... But there was a great deal of expectation surrounding this sixth film, based on the penultimate book in J K Rowling's seven volume epic of magical larks in wizardland. So how does it measure up?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter is not a happy boy-wonder-genius-action wizard when we meet him in a railway station cafe. He's still sad about the death of the character at the end of the previous film, who I won't name because people are still funny about it, even though it's blatantly obvious they're going to die from the outset. Ah well.

Quickly, Dumbledore meets up with Harry and takes him to recruit Horace Slughorn, the only new character of note in this film, played fantastically by Jim Broadbent. Then it's back to Hogwarts for another year of japes, even if all the merry little witches and wizards have become a bit obsessed with snogging. It's still not clear whether the butterbeer they're so obsessed with is actually alcoholic, though.

Dumbledore and Harry spend most of the film trying to win the trust of Slughorn, who may or may not know something that will help them in the War against the Dark Wizard Voldemort. This means plenty of opportunities to use the Penseive, the most blatant backstory expository tool I have ever seen in any film, ever.

After many hours of spying on Voldemort's memories, Harry and Dumbledore go somewhere else entirely and fight zombies, before the climax which is supposed to be thrilling and shocking and surprising, but which everyone in the world read in the book three or four years ago.

Performances

The central trio of Radcliffe, Grint and Watson, as Potter, Weasley and Granger respectively, are perfectly comfortable in their roles, as indeed they should be after five previous films. They've grown up with the series and while Radcliffe's delivery is still coming over a bit stilted, they all now just about win me over through sheer familiarity.

The other regulars, the wizarding teachers of Hogwarts, are also on totally acceptable form, particularly Alan Rickman as Snape, and Michael Gambon has finally more or less shed the bizarre Richard Harris impersonation for Dumbledore, giving us a much more pro-active and steelier version of the old wizard.

Every recent Potter film, it seems to me, has contained a couple of film-stealing performances. _Prisoner of Azkhaban_ had Gary Oldman's wonderfully crazed Sirius Black ("Let's just kill 'im!") with an honourable mention for Tim Spall as Wormtail. _Goblet of Fire_ had Ralph Fiennes clearly under the impression he was in a much better film as Voldemort, but David Tennant still walked away with the film as Barty Crouch, Jr with just two minutes of screen time. Order of the Phoenix was stolen completely by Helena Bonham Carter, and she's on fine form again here, but this time the plaudits have to go to Jim Broadbent, as the manipulative but rather pathetic Slughorn, and Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy. Malfoy's never really had much to do in the films other than sneer every so often or look grumpy when Gryffindor win at Quidditch, but he stepped up to the challenge with a cracking performance, I thought.

Special effects

These were very nice, but in this day and age, they've no right not to be. The battle in the cave was exceptionally well-realised though, so much credit to all involved there. The obligatory early 'isn't magic cool' scene, complete with Harry gazing around in slack-jawed wonder, is technically accomplished, yet also quite dull. Magic is cooler when you're blowing stuff up, not fixing it. FACT.

Lost in Translation?

The fact is, this film was based on my least favourite Harry Potter novel. The book is a clumsy mess of backstory as J K Rowling realises she's never given us any real motivation for Voldemort, and scrambles to get some sort of plot in place before the seventh and final volume. It's basically a series of scenes of Harry and Dumbledore watching the past life of Lord Voldemort, and it's the most obvious book to suffer from Rowling's lack of editorial discipline. I've reviewed the book elsewhere, but how did the film's producers cope with such difficult source material?

Well, many of the duller bits are cut. The Pensieve scenes are kept to a minimum, and some of the more bizarre parts of the book, such as the Minister of Magic turning up specifically to say that he's not going to be in it any more, are deleted entirely (while keeping the incredibly cool bridge attack by the Death Eaters, naturally).

And all of this is a very good thing. The trouble is, however, that the action sequences seem to have been diluted as well, and this is one book where there aren't too many of those. The Death Eaters' final attack in particular is bewilderingly muted in style. An action sequence at the Weasley house is added but lacks any real conclusion, it's all a bit aimless.

The exceptions to this are the excellent cave battle sequence I mentioned earlier, and also a toilet fight between Harry and Draco which just seems to have crept in from a better film (it's unmistakably reminiscient of True Lies, only with magic wands instead of machine pistols). It's at these moments, when the film makers have the confidence to move away from the novel, and flex their cinematic muscles a bit, that the Harry Potter films become truly worth watching. At other times, and sadly the big spoiler moment is one of these, it's just a bit like watching Jackanory with a full cast.

The character development is almost completely relationship-based, as Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny become closer and closer, with hilarious consequences. There are enough people on the internet with Opinions about these developments, so as I don't really care, I shall gloss over and move on to the conclusion of this piece.

Any good, then?

All in all, there are moments which are exciting, there are moments which are moving, there are moments which are funny, but all in all, like the book which inspired it, this just feels like a film setting up the final chapter in the series. Which, as the final chapter will apparently be split into two installments, is even more irritating for the film versions. Basically, the film is a mess of backstory, perked up by Jim Broadbent and a welcome guest appearance from Helena Bonham Carter's cleavage.

Summary: A mess of backstory, perked up by Jim Broadbent and Helena Bonham Carter's cleavage.