HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE follows J. K. Rowling’s 600+ page novel fairly closely. As you might expect, there’s some compression in the plot and a few portions of the book have been dropped. For example, in the book there were three Quidditch matches, in the movie there’s just one. The movie is two hours and thirty-five minutes. It sags in a few places. Maybe my curmudgeonly attitudes are out of tune with the times, but I found all the “snogging” a bit tedious. There’s no doubt that this is a dark movie compared to the the sunny, playful early Harry Potter films. There’s not a lot of humor. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ll be seeing this move soon. If you’re not, nothing I’ve said about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is going to matter much. GRADE: B
Decided not to wait for the July 29 IMAX version, eh?
I might see the IMAX version, too. I did that with STAR TREK.
I found the book a lot darker too, so I’m not surprised. We’ll see it in the next couple of weeks. And other reviewers I’ve read were fairly similar to yours, George.
Roger Ebert liked HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE a lot more than I did.
Thanks for the review, George. Here it’s playing in regular, IMAX and IMAX 3-D. We’ll probably go to the non-3-D IMAX version in a couple of weeks when we hope the crowds are less.
Jeff’s correct, the book was darker than the previous ones, and they continued t get more serious and doom-filled right to the end of the series. I think Rowling’s efforts at introducing more romance to the books was partially successful. We took out the first movie last weekend and agree we like it the best, mostly because it has a lot of how-it-works-in-this-world stuff that was then assumed after that.
Rick, I think the early Harry Potters–both the books and the movies–had a sense of innocence and wonder. The later books, and now the films, are dark. I’ll be interested to see how the two final movies handle the end of the series.