Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“I have to do this!” Draco whimpers as he holds his wand at the ready towards a defenceless Dumbledore. “I have to do this!” I say to myself when I foolishly realise what a good idea it would be to write a Half-Blood Prince review, almost a week after actually seeing the film.
If you’re reading this then you’re either one of my many(~) blog readers or you typed ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince film review’ into Google and read so many reviews that you’ve now reached page 14 where this little blog post was waiting for you. This means you would have read a lot of other opinions and are looking for something new, if you’ve stumbled across my blog in a desperate attempt to find more things Harry Potter then you’ve also probably seen the film. So, I won’t try and hide important climax’ or sensor anything. I actually already wrote a page long review for a friend and that was only describing the first half hour, so it will be tricky to narrow this review down to an internet browser friendly length. I shall try my best:

1. If you haven’t seen the film, watch out for the Hogwarts Express. Everyone I know who has seen it didn’t notice, but the train seems to have lost its magic. In the other films the Hogwarts Express is a shiny, bright crimson, in this film it’s a faded red. It’s almost as if the film makers misplaced the old train (as trains are very easy things to lose~) and had to make do with spray painting an average train from the undergrounds of London... although the trains in London are double deckers. It was like they were amateurs trying to mimic the Hogwarts Express of the first films. Why on earth would we care about your dislike towards the new Hogwarts Express? You may ask. I might ask myself the same question.

2. Lupin and Tonks. Being the Lupin fan that I am, I was glad to find that my favourite sub plot of the book was one of the main focuses of the film ~. Throughout the book we are given clues as to why Tonks has undergone a personality change (from her optimistic, fun self to something quite the opposite.)Tonks features heavily in the novel and even shows up at Hogwarts a few times. In the end we find out that Tonks loves Lupin and has been upset because he claims he’s ‘too old, too poor and too dangerous’ for her. In the film Tonks and Lupin appear for about five minutes, within those five minutes Tonks calls him ‘sweetheart’ and we are to assume they’re together. Never mind, I’m sure we’ll see plenty of the couple in The Deathly Hallows, just as we saw plenty of Bill and Fleur in this one ~.

3. Draco Malfoy. I must say that I thought Tom Felton was the standout actor of this film, having said that I should mention that I’ve never been a fan of his (just in case you thought I was being biased), he’s always been one of my least favourite characters and I never really thought a great deal for or against Tom Felton’s acting. I wasn’t expecting a lot from him and was surprised by how much I liked Malfoy in this film. I think I’ll go as far as to say that he was better in the film than in the book. Maybe not ‘better’ but I certainly felt sorrier for him in the film. For example: in the book when Harry uses Sectumsempra against Malfoy, I was more concerned that Sectumsempra was an unexpectedly dark spell for the Half-Blood Prince, in the film I was more concerned for the welfare of Malfoy and was actually kind of glad that Sectumsempra wasn’t as extreme as it is in the book. Of all the humorous lines and magical moments, my favourite part of the film was the look on Malfoy’s face when Bellatrix all but obliterated the Great Hall.

4. Several people in this world will roll their eyes when they read the next few sentences. Why was Neville’s role so incredibly small? He was little more than an extra.
“Good luck at the game, Ron!”
“Drink, Harry?.... I didn’t get into the Slug Club, but it’s alright.”
And that was it for the wonderful Matthew Lewis and his great acting (note that there is no ~ at the end of that sentence.) They gave Luna a lot of bonus camera time though, which was nice even though sometimes she appeared only to fill in for the disregarded Tonks.

5. I fully accept the change of script in regards to the cabinet. I think that telling the audience that it was a cabinet from the beginning and exposing its purpose gradually, served as a good way to adapt this part of the story into film. By doing this we didn’t have to watch Harry trying to get into the room of requirements again and again and we had some visual stimulus to keep us guessing and thinking about what Malfoy was up to.

6. Harry and Ginny. “You’re shoelace” she says and then bends down to tie it up for him “Merry Christmas” she adds “thankyou Ginny, I’ve always wanted someone to do up my shoelace for Christmas, you must have found that Christmas list of mine I left lying around.” The pause between Ginny’s ‘Merry Christmas’ and when she leans in to kiss him was a little long and made several people in the cinema laugh.

7. And then there’s Dumbledore’s death. I can imagine Alan Rickman (Snape) spending hours in front of his bathroom mirror practising the Avada Kedavra that sends Dumbledore to his end. Holding his toothbrush at the ready and shouting the killing curse at his reflection. Unfortunately, I actually did imagine this at the moment of Dumbledore’s death, as he fell from the tower I wasn’t thinking ‘this is sad’ or ‘Michael Gambon seems to be pulling this off alright’ I was thinking ‘Alan Rickman must have tried a million different ways of saying that.’ Anyway, you’ve probably had enough of my odd little so called ‘reviews,’ but I do need to mention how nonsensical I thought it was that Harry wasn’t under his invisibility cloak and/or paralysed when Dumbledore died. The words of Dumbledore (“It is imperative that you stay hidden, Harry. Trust me”) was the only thing stopping Harry from saving his headmaster and good friends’ life. Knowing Harry (which of course I do, as I’ve met him numerous times ~) he would have tried with all his might to save Dumbledore’s life, regardless of a few words of caution and Snape saying “shh.” I think it was a fair enough decision to dispose of Dumbledore immobilising Harry, but when Snape came across Harry in hiding, it would have been a perfect moment for Snape to simply say Pertificus Totalus so that there would be no one standing in his way as he finished of what Malfoy couldn’t.

8. The credits. Who cares about the credits? I do. I was just wondering how they decide who gets to go before who in the credits at the end of the film. One at a time the names of the actors appear on the screen: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, some other adult actors who are barely in it including David Thewlis and then Tom Felton’s name pops up onto the screen accompanied by some other, virtually unknown, actor. Why does David Thewlis’ name get to be shown before Tom Felton’s? I’m a bit of a David Thewlis fan, so this isn’t a biased comment. Malfoy features way more than Lupin, and Tom Felton’s name wasn’t even by itself. I considered that they may show the names alphabetically after the main three, but then Thewlis wouldn’t have come before Felton. I think they show the more famous actors first. You don’t care? I didn’t expect you would.