Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince was always one of my favourite books from the Harry Potter series. I remember reading it in J2 and being absolutely blown away by it! Because of this, I had very little expectations of how movie 6 would be, simply because I disliked most of the movie interpretations of the books: not because the acting was bad or the feel of the movies weren't good, but the way the original story was cut and butchered to condense all the amazing subtleties that only literature can bring into the films. It has been a long wait for movie 6, and I must say I have lost quite abit of the passion and excitement that I used to have with regards to all things Potter, and I think I shocked a number of friends when I admitted that I have yet to catch the movie til today. Its probably the first time where I DIDN'T catch a HP movie within the first three days of its release!
Anyway, I finally caught the movie today! Movie 6 was admittedly, surprisingly good! As a Potterite, I will always have things to gripe about, but as a whole, it was still quite a well made movie! The acting was good, the dark feel of it perfect, the vision of the world quite accurate. What I didn't like was of course, the usual issues of how the screenplay cut out important plotlines, scenes and lines. I absolutely didn't like the scene of the burrow being incinerated. I felt it was absolutely redundant, and the time spent wasted on that scene could have been used instead to film the original ending in the book, which featured a battle in the astronomy tower of Hogwarts. I also had an issue with the intense focus the film had on the whole teenage romance thing. I felt the film-makers were focusing too much on what was supposed to be a minor subplot in the books; they were banking on something that was definitely going to be appealing to the crowds, and completely neglected what was the main focus of the novel: that of Dumbledore's and Harry's evolving teacher/student relationship, and the way they finally worked together to unravel the mystery of Voldemort's immortality.
I find it a pity that the whole affair with the memories was brought across in such a seemingly flippant way, but to bring all those chapters from the novel into life is going to be an impossibly boring task. It would have definitely been much more entertaining to focus on the hilarious situations that teenage love would bring about. Still, I find it sad that there was so little focus on Dumbledore in this movie. I think he had too little scenes, so much so that I don't feel like the audience actually got a chance to feel for him. I don't think many people even cared that he actually died. His death didn't feel emotional enough. Yeah, that's it.
Still, there were things I did like. Jim Broadman's Horace Slughorn was well portrayed. Daniel Radcliffe's Felix-Felicis-Intoxicated-Harry and Rupert Grint's love-potion-intoxicated-Ron were both simple HILARIOUS. Alan Rickman's Snape was once again, played to perfection. Lavender Brown and Cormac McClaggan were both so well portrayed that I cringed whenever they appeared. Young Tom Riddle was creepy and a picture of controlled evil, just fantastic. And the whole cave sequence was actually quite well portrayed, except for minor changes here and there, and how some heart-breaking lines from the novel were left out.
All in all, it was quite a good movie. As a whole, it was one of the better Harry Potter movies made, but of course, not perfect. None of the movies can ever be perfect, because none of them will be able to capture the magic that the books bring. Its just so different reading it, and letting your imagination run wild. I think these movies help enhance my original impression of the world that the books are trying to create, but in the end, nothing beats one's own imagination when it comes to fantasy. Now all I want to do, is to read all 7 books over again.
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