Harry potter and the Half-Blood Prince was a truly enjoyable movie to watch. Then why are people leaving the cinema saying that although it was a good movie it was just a pointless, shit-load of information, without a real climax and an extremely openending. To us, Harry Potter readers, who unlike all the other passive members in the audience left the cinema wiping off a tear, the answer is obvious. Harry potter and the Half-Blood prince is just a prologue to the great, incredible finale: ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. And what a prologue it was! David Yates managed to create a true epic with a best-seller, 600 paged book.
A well known fact is that a book is rarely perfect in its own right, for the silver screen.
Knowing this, Steve Kloves (screenplay) ignores all the details in the book and creates a script that is perfect for the cinema, making it entertaining, funny and exciting. This is probably the first movie in the series which, although it ignores the details, manages to show all the aspects which made us love the Harry Potter books and Hogwarts; adventure, growing-up, love, friendship, school pressure and many other aspects which make us love the books. An incredibly theme in the movie was romance, but was this too reoccurring?
Romance was so reoccurring that many people thought that Harry Potter had turned into a romantic comedy, which is not the image which we would like for Harry Potter.
The romantic aspect was too much, making it nearly sick for us book-fans. At first it was ok, adding some fun after the gloomy Order of the Phoenix and Goblet of Fire, which is healthy because darkness was becoming indigestive, and I must say that Rupert made a great job of this making the cinema explode with fits of laughter. Emma also makes a brilliant job in interpreting Hermione, who has a crush on Ron. She depicts the character perfectly showing infatuation, jealousy and everything which makes us love Hermione’s character. The Harry & Ginny kiss was not as I expected. I preferred the surprising kiss after the final quidditch match in the book. Then the comedy was increasing, making us wonder if we had stumbled upon a screening of ‘The Proposal’ but then things became serious again and the movie regained balance.
The scenes of the Tom Riddle’s memories were incredible. So great that it made the whole cinema listen attentively, pausing from drinking their Pepsi’s and munching their popcorn. Both memories depicted, which were perfectly chosen, were incredibly creepy making you wonder how a young Voldemort would act. Slughorn’s party scene was also incredibly depicted and the Sectumsempra scene was also brilliant, although I think that it could have been done better. I think that a vital contribution to the probable success of this movie with regular (non-reader) viewers is the re-addition of Draco as a main character after his absence from the lime-light in the last three movies and for this we have to give two thumbs up to Tom Felton who makes Malfoy look as a real honest character, not just a bad guy.
The last few scenes from the movie are probably my favorite scenes from all 6 movies, surpassing the Ministry in Ootp, the graveyard, the expecto patronam scene in, the Chamber of Secrets and the Philosopher stone scene. The scenes of theHorcrux Cave (Horcrux Cave.co.nr lol) and the Astronomy tower were like reading the book for the first time again. The brilliant depiction from Daniel Radcliff and Michael Gambon were the reason for this. The cave scene was so exciting that I have no words for it; the inferi, the fire everything and all I can say about the Astronomy Tower is that I was crying.
In the end, all I can say is that this movie is the best in the series for us readers and one of the best for the others thanks to the adaptation by Steve Kloves. The movie is an incredible way to prologue the Deathly Hallows, which we can only hope that it will be this good. All things contributed to this; acting, graphics, directing, screenplay etc. The final verdict: 4+
