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Dusty: [talking into a mirror] I am the Chosen One.
This film is based on J. K. Rowling's 2005 novel of the same name, and both are the sixth installment of their respective mediums from the Harry Potter franchise.
Rating: PG
Director: David Yates
Writers: J.K. Rowling, Steve Klaves
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent
Release Date: July 15, 2009 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 33 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
Lord Voldemort tightens his grip on the wizarding and Muggle worlds: his Death Eaters kidnap Mr Ollivander and destroy London's Millennium Bridge. With Lucius Malfoy incarcerated in Azkaban, Voldemort chooses his son, Draco Malfoy, to carry out a secret mission at Hogwarts. Draco's mother, Narcissa, and aunt Bellatrix Lestrange seek out Severus Snape, who gains their confidence by claiming he is a mole within the Order of the Phoenix. Snape makes an Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa to protect Draco and fulfil his task should he fail.
Harry Potter accompanies Albus Dumbledore to persuade former Potions professor Horace Slughorn to return to Hogwarts. Then, at the Burrow, Harry reunites with his best friends Ron and Hermione. In Diagon Alley, they see Draco and Narcissa Malfoy, and follow them into Knockturn Alley. The pair meet with Death Eaters, including the werewolf Fenrir Greyback, at Borgin & Burke's. Harry believes Draco is now a Death Eater, but Ron and Hermione are sceptical. On the Hogwarts Express, Harry sneaks into the Slytherin carriage wearing his Invisibility Cloak to spy on Malfoy. Malfoy notices and petrifies Harry, leaving him on the train. Luna Lovegood finds him and counters Draco's spell.
Harry discovers that his used Potions textbook is filled with helpful notes and spells added by the "Half-Blood Prince". Using it, Harry excels in class, annoying Hermione and impressing Slughorn, who awards him a Liquid Luck potion. Ron makes the Gryffindor Quidditch team as Keeper and begins dating Lavender Brown, upsetting Hermione, who harbours feelings for him. Harry consoles Hermione while acknowledging his own feelings for Ginny Weasley. Harry spends the Christmas holidays with the Weasleys. His suspicions about Draco are dismissed by the Order, but Arthur Weasley reveals that the Malfoys may be interested in a Vanishing Cabinet at Borgin & Burke's. Bellatrix and Greyback attack and destroy the Burrow.
At Hogwarts, Dumbledore asks Harry to retrieve Slughorn's memory of a young Voldemort. Slughorn has resisted giving an accurate memory. After Ron accidentally ingests a love potion intended for Harry, Harry takes him to Slughorn for a cure. After curing Ron, Slughorn offers both boys some mead he had intended as a gift to Dumbledore. Ron is poisoned upon sipping it, and Harry's quick thinking saves him. While recovering in the infirmary, Ron murmurs Hermione's name, causing Lavender to end their relationship. Harry confronts Draco about the poisoned mead and also a cursed necklace that nearly killed Katie Bell. A duel erupts, and Harry uses one of the Half-Blood Prince's curses without knowing what it is. The curse severely injures Malfoy, and he is only saved by Snape's timely arrival and reversal of the curse. Fearing the book contains Dark Magic, Ginny persuades Harry to hide it in the Room of Requirement. They then share their first kiss.
In Hagrid's hut, Harry uses his Liquid Luck potion to convince the reluctant Slughorn to surrender the memory Dumbledore needs. Viewing it in the Pensieve, Dumbledore and Harry learn Voldemort sought information about Horcruxes, magical objects containing pieces of a wizard's soul for immortality. Dumbledore surmises Voldemort divided his soul into six Horcruxes, two of which have been destroyed: Tom Riddle's diary and Marvolo Gaunt's ring. They travel to a cave where Harry aids Dumbledore in drinking a potion that hides another Horcrux, Slytherin's locket.
A weakened Dumbledore defends them from Inferi by creating a ring of fire, and apparates them back to Hogwarts, where Bellatrix, Greyback, and other Death Eaters have entered through the Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement that Draco has secretly connected to one in Knockturn Alley. As Harry hides, Draco appears and disarms the headmaster, revealing Voldemort chose him to kill Dumbledore. Draco hesitates; Snape, however, arrives and kills Dumbledore. As the Death Eaters escape, Snape reveals to Harry that he is the Half-Blood Prince.
As Hogwarts students and staff mourn Dumbledore's death, Harry tells Ron and Hermione that the locket is fake and contains a message from "R.A.B.", who stole the real Horcrux intending to destroy it. Harry, Ron and Hermione agree to forgo their final Hogwarts year to hunt for the remaining Horcruxes.
My Review:
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth film in the Harry Potter franchise, and like its immediate predecessor The Order of the Phoenix, there is little fun or childhood silliness in this film. That's not to say that it's bad, but the tonal shift from the first four films is drastic. Even scenes which could have been funny - like a professor pretending to be an arm chair - didn't really land that way for me. This is in part a function of the source material itself, and also in part a function of the necessary cuts that come alongside adaptation. The movie needs tonal consistency in a way that a book does not, and the tone of this story is very ominous. With a more than two and a half hour runtime, as it was, the film was strained to find things to cut loose and most of those cuts comprised the lighter side of the source material.
We did not get to see the Dursley family at all in this film. We saw very little quidditch (other than Ron's portion which was central to his plot with Hermione.) And unfortunately, the movie did not give the audience a fun version of Harry's budding romance with Ginny, it gave us a dull one, wherein Ginny has very little personality and we are not clued in enough as to why Harry has fallen for her. The movie was set-up badly, in some respects, by the earlier films also not giving Ginny a personality, however, this film really needed to do that and did not.
As to the last, I think the movie did itself a bit of a disservice by having Harry open the movie in a casually flirtatious interaction with a stranger at a diner. The transition of Harry picking up a waitress (one who is an adult who displays a big personality in only a few seconds of screentime) to him falling for a fellow minor in Ginny was rough, and it happens right away to start the film. I also thought the transition from the end of the previous film, to that scene, was awkward. A week after his beloved godfather dies, right in front of him, he's unbothered and picking up girls women in the London Underground? I couldn't understand what the writers were going for there except that it made it possible for Dumbledore to pick Harry up without paying for screen time for the Dursleys.
If the film had omitted its opening scene, and changed the somewhat pointless Death Eater attack on the Weasley house into fun moments for Harry to really notice Ginny having an actual personality for the first time, the film would have been well-served.
As usual for this franchise, The Half-Blood Prince looked fantastic. The cinematography was great - with the shots of the attack on the bridge, Dumbledore's fall, and the sun covered castle at the end of the film being particularly standout. However, the special effects team decided to add a a smoke (exhaust?) trails in the sky behind flying brooms - something I was not a fan of because it made no sense. We saw this in a big way to open the film, with the death eaters flying in thick black bands of smoke before knocking down a major muggle bridge, and then again later during the brief quidditch scenes with comparatively smaller but still visible trails. Those scenes had the feel of a director who thought it looked cool, and didn't really care whether it made sense. However, it bothered me that it didn't make sense.
The pacing of this movie felt out of sorts. I know the source material well, but I wonder if I could have really understood the plot without that background knowledge. The movie simultaneously felt rushed and as though it dragged, with things happening in quick succession but without the sense of a build toward a climax. There were two main plot threads in the film. One of them was Dumbledore and Harry's quest to learn about the horcruxes. That was done relatively well. The other thread was Draco Malfoy's mission. The two things sort of converged at the end of the movie, but I think the Draco plotline was too subtle. The story needed to ramp up the "what is he doing" tension to a greater degree. Harry's love story with Ginny was arguably a third plot thread, but it just never felt earned.
The title of the film is The Half-Blood Prince, a reference to Snape's previously unknown self-given title. Not surprisingly, Alan Rickman shines in this film, giving his character - even after he murders Dumbledore - a sense of mixed allegiances. Michael Gambon also gave an outstanding performance, particularly his scenes in the cave. His version of Dumbledore isn't a great match for the books' version, but it is enjoyable and perhaps better suited to the screen. I also really enjoyed the addition of Jim Broadbent to the cast as Professor Slughorn, who manages to inject some levity into the film even in its serious moments. I particularly loved his interaction with Hagrid and Harry while they buried Aragog the spider.
Overall, this movie is a mixed bag for me. The death of Dumbledore is a big moment for the franchise, with the well-executed emotional punch you'd expect, but a lot of what led up to that moment felt a little rushed, unearned, and lacking in magic (a bad thing in this type of story.) The romance plotline between Harry and Ginny was particularly weak in those areas. A lot of the charm of the source material lies in the reminders that its young heroes are still children, growing into young adults. I think the film series' approach, since the story darkened, is to treat them as young adults who just so happen to still at school... and it doesn't work. Either way, story writing problems aside, The Half-Blood Prince is beautifully filmed and brilliantly acted. The end of the film is well-done and sets up the final chapters really well.
I look forward to the next chapter.
Have you seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? If so, what did you think?
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