I come to praise Potter, not to bury him. For the most part.

     Aside from dragging into work a little bit this morning after finally getting to bed at 3:00 A.M. after the movie, my initial reaction is that I really enjoyed it a lot. It’s a very fun movie. Half-Blood Prince is my second favorite book in the series right behind Deathly Hallows, so I was very nervous.

     You see, one of my favorite elements of the Harry Potter films was this very interesting pattern of hiring a different director helming each movie, and thus each movie felt like a fresh and interesting new take on the series, which I really liked. Now, I was not a fan of The Order of the Phoenix.  First of all, it’s my least favorite book in the series, and I felt the movie (outside of a few outstanding sequences) was overall an awkward, clunky mess. So, when I heard that David Yates (the director of Phoenix) had been brought on board to finish out the series, I was very much against this idea. 

     I think my biggest problem with Half-Blood Prince (and it’s not a terribly big one) is the film’s ending.  Yates does more or less a pretty good job with Prince’s third act (which is arguably, emotionally and developmentally the second most important third act of any story in the series, right behind Goblet of Fire), but unfortunately that’s all it is. Pretty good. Maybe I’m just biased to the books, but I felt like while the third act of Half-Blood Prince is wonderfully portrayed by the actors and beautifully photographed, it lacks some of the emotional rawness that I experienced reading the book.  From all the characters. It’s still done really well (despite rumors I had heard that it was a disaster, which I think is a pretty gross exaggeration after having seen the film).

     The biggest flaw here is the ending. The movie just ends without any sign of emotional anguish or grief that you feel from the book, and it feels clunky. This was also my biggest complaint of the Order of the Phoenix film (also directed by David Yates), which leads me to wonder if Yates struggles with ending these stories. Kind of a disconcerting feeling to have of a director that’s recently been hired to orchestrate the end of the ENTIRE FRANCHISE. But I digress…

     So, what’s great about the film? Lots! I think this film’s biggest strength is its ability to perfectly balance being simultaneously both the funniest film in the series and also the darkest. The balance of these two qualities feels seamless and natural. The awkward humor and amusing teenage hormonal shenanigans smoothly relieves the growing darkness and dread in this film more effectively, I think, than it even did in the book! When I read Half-Blood Prince, I didn’t particularly feel the need to linger on all the kissy silliness as much as it did, and I found myself much more interested in the plot and the darkness and Voldemort’s back story and all that. Watching the movie, however, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the teenage shenanigans.  It's just really funny and very entertaining, and I could have easily sat through another hour of it. 
 

     Which brings me to another praise of this movie.  The performances. The performances here are top notch. Jim Broadbent is just absolutely fantastic as Horace Slughorn – a character that, I should note, I had little to no interest in whatsoever while reading the book. He’s just so deliciously awkward while desperately pretending to be cool that he eats up every scene in all the right ways, and it’s really comedy gold, particularly in the midst of all the teenage hormonal humor (he’s also a great comic foil for the always fantastic Ron Weasley). Kudos to Broadbent.

     Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy really steps up his acting game this go around. This is the first movie where I didn’t feel like Malfoy was just a jackass running around glaring at everyone like he was about to make out with them at any minute. Instead, for the first time, he comes across as a kid on the verge of a very legitimate emotional meltdown and for very good reason. He becomes a rival with real menace towards Harry, but for the first time he actually comes across as human who feels, dare I say it, worthy of empathy.

     Sir Michael Gambon’s portrayal of Dumbledore’s vulnerable mortality this time around is very compelling. His scene with Harry in the cave is heartbreakingly beautiful, and I really wished they had kept the dialogue from the book during one particularly important act he is forced to endure down there. It was just such a big part of what made that scene so spooky to me in the book. While Gambon’s performance is the strongest here of any Dumbledore performance in the series so far, I couldn’t help but suspect that Gambon could have been pushed even a little bit further as an actor into those dark places, and it would have really added to the scene.

     I could probably say more. The kids are fantastic, as always, Harry is fantastic, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, and all the other characters and gobbledygook are fantastic as well. Those were just some of the main points I had in my head while watching this movie. Overall, I would say that the film is an elegant success for Potter fans (although it may be a bit more bewildering to all you Muggles out there who haven’t read the books or seen the movies). I recommend this movie to Potter fans, but more strongly than that, I strongly recommend reading the book first. Almost view this movie as a companion adaptation to what is much more so a heartbreaking, thrilling, and brilliantly written book.

     I don’t think fans of the other movies in the series so far will be disappointed by this film either.

     -Marc