Witch Reviews

The End Begins!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
directed by David Yates
posted by JoVo

Gloom Gloom Gloom Gloom

Review Image: 1002130038

This is it! This is the year that the final installment of the Harry Potter film series is due to come out, and if you're not excited about it, then you may as well be a Death Eater. As a series, it is enchanting. CGI seems to be getting better and better because, at least to my untrained eye, the magic is beautiful to behold.

In this penultimate installment of the series, Harry returns to Hogwarts in the fall following the year that every wizard in the magical world finally admitted to themselves that the Dark Lord is back and ready to take the world by storm. But don't let the promo picture above fool you! This movie, more than any of the others in the series, moves along like an episode in a mini-series and less like a movie. There's action—no doubt—but the most exciting thing that happens in the movie has little to do with the Dark Lord at all.

It's the emotional aspect of the movie that captivates the most. If you love Harry, Ron, and Hermione, then you will delight in watching this movie unfold. This movie slows the main plotline to a crawl in order to focus in on the main characters and their own engagements. And, honestly, how could you have watched this series for this long and failed to fall in love with them? Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) is absolutely gorgeous in his role, and grows more beautiful by the year. Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) came up nicely: from a freckled, nerdy, little redhead, into a cute guy whose arms you desperately want to put your arms around. And if Danny and Rupert don't move you, you have Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), who as of 2008 became legal (so you no longer have to hide the fact that you wanted to do her since she was 10).

I don't know about you, but I was absolutely delighted to see that Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) came back and got more screentime. He'd fallen by the wayside these past few years. Apparently, previous directors had all but forgotten about him. David Yates also directed The Order of the Phoenix, where Draco had only about one cameo appearance, and one wonders whether the only reason they remembered Felton was because the story sort of made him important. To be fair, Tom has been busy, so maybe it couldn't be helped. Either way, we're glad to have him back.

Honestly, I'd like to say more... but to do so would spoil much of the movie. If you read the books, then you pretty much know what happens. If you haven't, then you don't know, so you'll have to click below if you want to read more. Suffice it to say that, despite the Dark Lord plot's slow pace, the movie is not so slow, and it's definitely worth watching.

That is, unless you haven't seen any of the others. You have to see the others to make sense of this one. That's one of the bad things about series; they carry on, and you can rarely just "jump in."

<<< ALERT! >>> Spoilers Ahead! <<< ALERT! >>>

The Dark Lord plotline in this movie was so slow that anytime the Dark Lord was brought up in any way it seemed like an interruption to the regular flow of the movie. Harry must think so too, since he was about to get laid until Dumbledore shows up to take him to the home of some guy (Horace Slughorn, played by Jim Broadbent) so that Dumbledore can convince him to come back and teach at Hogwarts. The reason? He has an important secret, the discovery of which covers the entire plot of this movie. Which, as this plot moves along at a snail's pace, is pretty understandable.

Draco returns, only to become the Dark Lord's bitch. How did this happen? We can't be sure. Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) ended up getting sent to Azkaban for his actions in the last movie. Presumably, this tore Draco up so badly that it turned him to the dark side. (And with someone as hot as Helena Bonham Carter [Bellatrix Lestrange] wooing you into the service of the Dark Lord, who can resist!) Either way, we still see way too little characterization on someone who's supposed to be at least somewhat important to the plot.

My last criticism is this: Is Avada Kedavra the only way to kill anybody in the Harry Potter series? It's a very powerful, very forbidden spell, but by Goblet of Fire, it starts getting thrown around willy-nilly. You'd think someone would have said something by now. At the very least, The Daily Prophet should come out with a PSA warning about the dangers of Avada Kedavra and the rampant use it's been getting.

Aside from this, Harry, Ron, and Hermione have finally grown up. They're dating, Ron may or may not have had sex with some crazy nobody girl (Lavender Brown, played by Jessie Cave) whose only purpose was to make Hermione jealous, and Harry kissed Ginny Weasley (played by the beautiful Bonnie Wright)! Finally, although there was no follow-through (but we expect we'll see it in the next film) Harmoine and Ron admitted—in a manner of speaking—their undying like for each other.

This was an excellent episode, but I would only hold back in calling it a great movie in that it didn't have the feel of one. The plotline was too continuous. It felt like I was hanging out with my friends, not watching a piece of fiction. And then there's the biggest, most important question-on-everyone's-mind-until-we-all-forgot-it-because-it-didn't-matter-even-though-it-was-the-name-of-the-movie: Who is the Half-Blood Prince? Turns out it's Snape; he says it very dramatically, but we could see the look of "oh...I'd forgotten about that but thanks for settling the question" on Harry's face. Still, since I enjoy doing that, and since this is the penultimate movie, building the stage for the big finale, I decided in rating this movie that I would round up (I would've given it a 3.5 if I had the opportunity to do so).

WoD Inspirations

Pick up the Mage core rulebook. Read it. This is it—all of it.