My review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

[Jen Reese]

Jamieson:
> Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is, by far, the best movie 
> out of the series. David Yates has built upon his already 
> considerable skill and gone above and beyond with Half-Blood 
> Prince. Though his direction of Harry Potter and the Order of the
> Phoenix was superb, Half-Blood Prince is even better.
> 
> Yates and Steve Knowles, the screenwriter, have taken what it 
> perhaps the most difficult and clunky of the books in the series 
> and transformed The Half-Blood Prince into something streamlined
> and beautiful.

Jen: This isn't meant to be a quibble with your opinion, just an alternative.  OOTP was the best movie to me because Kloves *wasn't* the screenwriter.  He likes to give lines to other characters. He develops the children almost to the exclusion of the adults.  He favors Hermione over Ron.  Kloves never developed the animosity between Snape and Harry to the level it needs to be for the series.  In this movie, Kloves gives short shrift to the Dumbledore-Snape relationship as well as the Half-blood Prince & Riddle backstories(like he made the Marauders a background moment in POA). I'm sorry he's back to adapt DH.  

Jamieson: 
> The book was incredible but the flashbacks, while a good literary 
> device, would have felt laborious and repetitive in visual format.
> Knowles has taken a book that goes all over the place (hormones, a 
> country at war, dark wizards, love, secrets revealed, questions
> unanswered) and transformed it into something that is funny,
>  touching, dark and emotionally moving. No mere feat, I assure you.


Jen: The flashbacks are a more important part of HBP than the movie makes clear. The core of the series is Voldemort & Harry's mysterious relationship.  There's nothing in the HBP movie about why LV chose the Horcruxes he did so that Harry might gather clues for the future; nothing about how Riddle's family background & the Salazar Slytherin connection drove LV to feel both superior and obsessed with his immortality.  Voldemort's story is gutted.

The romance is funny & poignant.  It was a big part of HBP.  But if you're adapting a huge book into a movie, the critical elements need to be the foundation instead of an afterthought.

Jamieson: 
> And the performances in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were
> incredible. 

Jen: I agree. Felton and Broadbent particularly impressed me, along with Jessie Cave and the Trio.  Unfortunately, Rickman and Gambon didn't get a chance to act out the best moments of Snape and Dumbledore.