Wednesday, August 5, 2009

harry potter and the half-blood prince

i love the harry potter books so watching the latest installment on the big screen at midnight was a special treat. this is one of my favorite books in the series (though i feel they are all tremendous).

i came into the movie realizing that being a lengthy book, aspects of the story might have to be cut out or compressed. i was completely ok with that, and felt the director did a good job at it. i did feel however that the relationship stories with ron/hermione, and harry/ginny was definitely overplayed and got old after a while. i felt too much time was spent on that part and not enough on the half-blood prince story. this made the revealing of who the half-blood prince actually was at the end of the movie much less shocking than it was in the novel.

some scenes towards the end of the movie slightly disapointed me. while i found scene where harry and dumbledore travel to the cave to be completely terrifying, i wish the director would have stuck with the images and details from the book, (for ex. crystals and seashells instead of the book's goblet and basin). i felt the images in the book would have elevated an already haunting scene to new levels. Yate's decision to not really have a real hogwarts battle at the end of the movie made it feel less climatic.

those few gripes aside i liked this movie a lot. it was very dark; i'm surprised that it only got a PG rating. despite it's extremely dark subject matter, i found the movie to be very funny at times. it was acted well, and the direction and cinematography was also done very professionally. i had the thought while watching this film, that if all the potter films were directed this well and were this dark (similar to lord of the rings) i would like them better.

i recommend this film to fans of the book series and fans of the film.

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