Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Movie)
- Image by Monroedb1 via Flickr
Finally got to see Half-blood Prince this weekend, and it was extremely good. I’ve said before that HBP is my favorite of the Harry Potter novels, and this movie has a really good chance of being my favorite of the movies.
Like the books, the movies are growing progressively darker and more mature as the characters grow older and the situation more dire. This is not and cannot be an uplifting family film, simply because of its place in the extended storyline. B made the comment that this is the Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter franchise, and I have to agree. This is also the coming-of-age book and movie of the series, where Harry the child steps up and becomes Harry the man and Harry the soldier. This is the first time we hear him say “I am the chosen one” with the full knowledge of what that could mean for himself and those he loves.
For those of you who have not read the book or seen the movie yet, I will warn that the following will contain spoilers:
This was the first time that we got to see Tom Felton actually act, beyond having one or two lines of dialogue, and he stepped up to the challenge admirably, portraying a young man who is trapped in a situation far beyond what he’d expected or been led to believe it would be. He is gradually self-destructing throughout the movie, under the stress of what he has been tasked to do.
I do rather wish we had seen more of Snape in the movie, because this is the book where we begin to gain more insight into his character under the guise of the Half-blood Prince. As it was, the potions book belonging to the prince was relegated to a “cameo appearance” in the movie, despite being one of the focal points of the book and giving the book and movie their title. In the book, Harry identifies with the prince and gains an understanding of him through reading the notes he wrote in his potions book. In the movie, the book is more like a lucky annotated cliffs-notes that Harry uses to cheat at potions, and you don’t really get any more understanding of Snape.
The movie seemed to put much more emphasis on the hormone-heavy romantic entanglements, too. Yes, we know they’re teenagers doing what teenagers do, but that is only a minor plot-point of the book and should not have been made a major point of the book.
I ended the movie in tears. Even having prepared myself for that final scene, knowing what was going to happen, the movie still managed to jerk on my emotions. And that is a good thing. It means that the movie and the actors, were successful in making me believe, for a little while. So go see it, if you haven’t!
Related articles by Zemanta
- Serious New Character Posters For Harry Potter 6 (screenrant.com)
- Tom Felton Talks Draco Malfoy (shoppingblog.com)
- Why Read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (dashpunk.com)
Recent Comments