Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Though accusations and worries fly in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as to whether or not Albus Dumbledore is "asking too much" of those around him, it seems the film isn't; rather, it seems to be doing just right.

Director David Yates [who joined the series with Film #5] continues his streak of adapting J.K. Rowling's wildly popular Harry Potter series with the sixth (and penultimate, taking Deathly Hallows as one entity, though it's being split in two for 2010-11) entry in the franchise. Here, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his maturing buds Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint & Emma Watson) find themselves embroiled once more in the conflict between the wizarding world and its mortal enemy, Lord Voldemort (an unseen Ralph Fiennes, who appears elsewhere in the series). New potions master Horace Slughorn (an always-effervescent Jim Broadbent) takes up a post at Hogwarts as suspicions loom about shifty Professor Snape (Alan Rickman, effortlessly ominous). But Harry's main focus is taken up by Headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and his quest to learn Voldemort's past in order to finally defeat him.

I won't bother with comparisons to the book - other online commentators have nobly taken up that gauntlet (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Half-Blood_Prince_(film)#Differences_from_the_book for a fairly comprehensive overview) - mostly because the book was so long ago I can recall only the most significant plot details. Suffice it to say that Yates's adaptation seems to stand on its own as a creative work, indebted to the source material but not slavishly so. Instead, the globe-like burden of carrying the film rests on the Atlas-shoulders of the cast, particularly our three young'uns, who all do an able job of growing into the roles and comfortably becoming the characters. (Watch out for typecasting, kids.) Radcliffe is fine as the lead, oscillating comfortably between dramatic moodiness and comic levity. Grint is a sight as the goofy one of the bunch, looking lovelorn like nobody's business, and Watson might as well be a young Keira Knightley (props to my grandmother for spotting that one) for all the talent she's got. Perhaps the standout in the youth cast - already getting plenty of media attention - is Tom Felton, who as Draco Malfoy is charged with converting his character from a prototypical schoolyard bully into a real potential menace with more demons than Dementors hiding in his closet. He does more brooding in an hour than Christian Bale does on a good day, and he does it well, keeping a terrific air of mystery surrounding his character (for the novel's novices, that is). The adult cast isn't slouching, either; Broadbent is a fantastic pick for favoritism-prone Slughorn, Rickman is glorious as always, and Gambon continues to create his own weighty Dumbledore as distinct from the late Richard Harris's more aloof and endearing one. (It's a shame, though, that the filmmakers didn't choose Peter O'Toole as Harris's replacement.)

That said, the film is, simply put, a little long. At 2.5+ hours, the film can afford to take its time with the mythology surrounding a Horcrux or the backstories of characters like Voldemort or the mysterious "Half-Blood Prince" (whose potions book falls into Harry's hands), but the movie also gets bogged down in a lot of angsty teenage romance, humorously awkward but somewhat gregarious in its omnipresence. It's as if we want to grab the characters by the school-spirit scarves and give them a good shaking until they finally agree to snog [British for "kiss"] the lad or lass of their fancy. (Oh, yes, there's a great deal of snogging and preparing to snog.) Everyone does a fine job eliciting laughs with the awkward situations of teenage adulation - particularly Grint, whose sloppy grin only gets more uneven when he's duped into taking a potent love potion - but there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing."


But the film does fine work with the unspoken. Yates is a master of my favorite cinematic technique: visual language - that is, letting the film speak for itself without clumsy narration or heavyhanded dialogue addressing what's being depicted. Watch carefully as Yates directs Felton into the Room of Requirement and toward a mysterious cabinet; take note of how Yates uses cuts between Felton's expression and the apples and birds he puts into the cabinet, and be sure to pay attention when Yates cuts away from Hogwarts and into a shop in Diagon [or is it Knockturn? I myself can't keep all the mythology straight.] Alley. Without saying a word, the film masterfully tells us everything we need to know. I for one am glad Yates is staying on to finish out the franchise with a two-part adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, since he's proven here that he can handle weighty source material while still churning out a film that's fun for newcomers.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is rated "PG for scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality." Spells and their occasionally bloody after-effects, as well as a few creepy creatures and a looming sense of peril at every turn (including one spectacular jump moment near the film's climax), could be objectionable as far as "scary images [and] some violence" are concerned. The snogging in this film ("mild sensuality") isn't much to write home about, though it dominates a lot of the main characters' focus.