Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Review

Sorry for the delay but someone else wanted to co review, then became too busy so heres my thoughts on HP 6:


Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Review
To start with I have read every single book repeatedly, so I understand the story. I have liked all the movies for different reasons, but does Half Blood Prince keep interest in the franchise? Yes, quite well.

I want to emphasize the pacing of this movie, it was very good. It has its talking moments, its action moments, and its fantasy moments. The story is cut down very carefully and got the messages of the book across very well as far as I saw, and even though the trailers and the book highlights teen romance a bit, the movie didn’t end up having a bunch of pointless romance moments. Director David Yates managed to drop small snippets of the love interests without it being distracting, a few were a cause or effect of an important story moment. Oh they exist in the movie for a good 20 minutes, but they do it more for humor than for anything else.
What they managed to change about the book that was kind of stupid and yet effective was the anticipated moment between Snape and Dumbledore. At first I was annoyed with how they changed it, but I still found they kept the mysteriousness of Snape’s motives good. Another commendable trait is that the movie had a moment in the cave where suspense was built up, and yet completely caught everyone in the theatre off guard to the point of having all of us jump in our seats. I haven’t had that happen to me in like 3 years, that’s a feat to be commended on.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and can’t criticize much. But if I had to, I’d have to say the last 15 minutes which is pretty much the ending had me a little ticked off. The funeral that ended the book was not there, and what we got instead to “pay tribute” to a character was kind of lame and too quick. It ended fine, but the first part or so of reckoning of the ending was pretty bad. Also, just because I liked that they retained the mysteriousness of Snape’s motives doesn’t mean I’ll forgive the logic leaps when he meets Dumbledore in his office. It was pretty stupid the way the characters behaved in that scene before something anticipated from book readers happens.

I also happened to hate some of the ways they dealt with Draco Malfoy, no it was not his performance I had a problem with, but before Harry battled him it was like the director told him to run into the room and cry with almost no reason to. Granted be I understood, but non readers probably thought less of Malfoy’s pathetic crying scene and didn’t get the sudden amount of emotion.
Having said all of that, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is a good movie. It’s got great effects, good story, good fun moments, and leaves us with questions to ponder for the next movie.

I give it a 4 out of 5