"Now I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho."
I don’t remember disliking any of the Harry Potter films. Which is obviously a good thing. The trouble is, I don’t ever remembering loving any of the Harry Potter films either. I’d quite like to elaborate on why that is, but unfortunately, the whole franchise has long since merged into one giant fuzzy mess of wizardry in my brain for me to analyze any specifics.
I’m not completely hopeless mind you, I can remember the general gist of the story arc – ie young wizard finds out that he’s ‘the chosen one’ to destroy the mysterious Dark Lord, along with certain elements of various films – like Quidditch, giant snakes / spiders, and some hot chicks dressed in blue (apparently) – but then, they might all be things from the same film – I just couldn’t say for sure. More important things, like what happened to various characters in previous instalments – well frankly, that’s all a bit hazy now. The gap inbetween each Harry Potter film is just a bit too big for me to really appreciate the sum of the whole series’ parts.
So, perhaps I should make some notes for myself about the latest instalment: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, you know, just in case I find myself writing a review of the next Potter film in 2010 and find the need to refer back?
Well, ok… Harry, Hermione and the Ginger one are all growing up. Yep, they’ve all become interested in the opposite sex. Harry wants to marry a girl named Carrie (or something), Hermione has suddenly become Hormone-y, and the Ginger one, well, he’s started boinking some bit of psycho-crumpet, much to Hormone-y’s disgust. That probably takes up the first two thirds, and then there’s a bit of obligatory wand waving towards the end for reasons not entirely clear (as they perhaps spent too much time with all the comedy relationship stuff).
Sure there were a few unanswered plot questions, as my mate Andrew pointed out – why did Dumbledore want Harry to befriend Slughorn and retrieve his real memory of Voldemort when Dumbledore already knew about the Horcruxes? Where was the Golden Snitch in the Quidditch game? And even more importantly, do girls really find the Ginger one attractive?!
Yes, ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ was quite long and I wouldn’t argue it was a bit drawn out in places, but still, I found it reasonably entertaining and didn’t ever really get bored. Plus I don’t remember other Harry Potter films being quite as amusing, so I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it from that point of view.
There’s no doubt that in a month or two, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will also merge into the big memory-mush of movie-magic that’s currently residing in my mind, but HPATHBP is still a pretty entertaining film. At least it was while I can remember it.
7.5/10.
Love the Alan Rickman joke.
As I said to you this was the first movie that really felt like they had been forced to leave whole chunks of the book out. The relationship stuff was amusing, though I personally think that the film where Harry first gets a girl friend (goblet of fire????) was funnier. It just felt like they had reduced the main plot to the bare minimum.
You already mentioned the apparent redundancy in the whole Slughorn story but there was also the whole half blood prince bit which I am sure was meant to seem sinister and dramatic but just came across like Harry had found a way to cheat in class. The big reveal at the end of who the HBP is seemed completely pointless and had no dramatic effect because the whole HBP plot line had no drama to it at all.
In fact the whole end of the film seemed to belong to a different movie. I also don’t think they did a very good job of explaining why snape went evil. Not that it was all bad. The guy who played the evil kid was very good and like you said it was rather funny in places.
Not one of the best movies but not one of the worst either. Could have done with less relationship stuff and more plot though.
I think of that line every time I hear Alan Rickman’s voice!
Perhaps some of those questions will be tied up in the final two films? Meh. Probably not. I suppose it’s just difficult cramming 700 pages into 2 and a half hours. I’d love to say that I’d read all the books before the next two films come out, but since I’ve been reading Yes Man for the last four years and I’m still only half way through, it seems pointless even suggesting that.