Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince Review

Overall Rating

Very long, lots of special effects and not much of a story just about sums up what is going in the penultimate movie in the Harry Potter series. Well, not strictly speaking the penultimate since they are splitting the final movie in two to squeeze some extra bucks out of punters, but let's not quibble.

In Harry Potter and the Half Blood Price, we rejoin the gang in darker times as the world around them grows more dangerous both inside and outside the magical school where no one seems to do any actual work.

Harry has to continue to destroy Voldemort at the same time as start a relationship with Jennie Weasley, Hermione is in love with Ron, Ron is dating someone else and Malfoy is dealing with something altogether far sinister.

The cast are all visibly much older now and older emotions are dealt with such as passion, jealousy, love, betrayal and death.

To give them their due the director and producers haven't shied away from making the film quite scary which will probably cost them some family tickets but will no doubt appeal to the books original child fans who, like the actors in the film are now probably in their late teens and early twenties. In fact in some places it borders on full-on horror of The Exorcist kind which was a much even for some adult audience members of the screening I went to.

The special effects as always are fantastic and there are some funny moments especially between Ron and his new girlfriend Lavender and with the new Professor Slughorn played brilliantly by Jim Broadbent. Helena Bonham Carter also seems to be having lots of fun as the evil Bellatrix.

The overall feeling though is of a movie where not very much happens. I went to see this at The O2 in Greenwich with a French friend who hadn't read the books and he has absolutely no idea what was happening or why. The makers seem to take for granted that you have either read the book or seen the previous films and make no allowances if you haven't. If you have seem them all then the film will make sense. If not it will be like being dropped in the middle of a strange city without a map.