Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (Film-Review)

You cannot NOT love a Potter movie. Watching Rowling’s world recreated in painstaking detail exactly the way you imagined it, is always a fun ride. And yet….. being a Potter-purist might leave you a tad miffed where ‘Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince’ are concerned.

So we have a teenaged Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) flirting with a muggle-waitress (apparently, in a bid to dull the shock of losing Sirius and have some semblance of reality in his life). But before things can get off the ground, Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) whisks the reluctant hero off onto the first of many tasks to come. A retired professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) is reinstated as Potions Master. But what about Snape (Alan Rickman), you ask? Hovering like a malevolent bat, he seems to have much more sinister things up his cloak than usual.

Soon, Dumbledore is taking Potter along on trips down Voldemort’s memory lane (courtesy, The Pensieve). These flashbacks, coupled with one elusive memory involving Prof.Slughorn might hold all the clues necessary to bring about the destruction of Voldemort.

So yes, in essence things are moving along at a desired pace. You get glimpses into a young and even then, eerily-evil Voldemort’s life. Harry discovers a Potions textbook of an old student who goes by the pseudonym of ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ and uses it to do splendidly well in potions. There’s sufficient romantic angst what with Ron (Rupert Grint) snogging a tremulous (and irritating) Lavender Brown at regular intervals, much to Hermione (Emma Watson)'s impotent anger. Harry skitters around his new-found infatuation for Ginny Weasley(Bonny Wright). A grown-up Draco(Tom Felton) looks paler than usual, thanks to an impossible task set to him by The Dark Lord. And the Death-Eaters led by the deliciously sadistic Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) and an icky Greyback are wrecking havoc in Muggle and Wizard World alike.

Harry is at his wittiest-best…a tad cocky but endearing nevertheless... Ron plays his role of the blustering bloke with ‘an-emotional-range-of-a-teaspoon’ to the tee….Snape is his usual crisply-loathsome self. And Dumbledore is a joy to behold…as always.

On the downside, vital characters (Hermione, Tonks, Lupin etc) look like scenery while Ginny gets centre-stage. If you haven’t read the book (really?!?)….it won’t make a spot of difference. But if you have…well, get prepared for some serious revamping.

In all, spell-binding to watch for the special effects and sheer grandeur of the sets. More screen-time for a few favourites would have been nice. But in the end it’s Harry Potter…and for the loyalty you owe the wee-Potter lad… just for that…you go and watch and keep the whining to a minimum.