Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

When you make a fantasy film, you have to make up for what you lack in originality with creativity. Harry Potter is the same story of the "chosen one" we've heard time and time again. He must fight a villain who is so pure evil, sometimes you wonder "Why? What does he gain?"

The first film was a wonderful children's fantasy, despite all that, because it was clearly an inventive story. A bit of youthful innocence, fantasies that most young kids could relate to, and a series of events that really filled us with a sense of awe and wonder. The second film managed to build on that, with a better story, a much more expansive world, and even setting up for the darker times that wait in Harry's adulthood. Unfortunately, the film lost that sense of awe and wonder for much of the third film, and lost it completely in the fifth. Luckily for us, part four showed us a terrifying side of the world without losing the magic that won people's hearts in the first place.

That's where Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince succeeds. It manages to take us to new worlds once again. Once again, Hogwarts is that magical place where you can be late for school because the stair case moved you to the wrong floor. This was not a bright and happy fairy tale, but we've long sinced moved beyond that. But at least we still have magic. Despite that, I must wonder why, in a world where just about anything can happen, all battles are resolved by somebody pointing a wand and shouting something.

That's probably where Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince fails. The world is as beautiful as ever. The story is by the numbers fantasy. Michael Gambon's Dumbledore has Harry Potter investigating a new teacher, who allegedly gave Tom Riddle (who is, in fact, Lord Voldermort) insight into secret, evil magic. Despite that, neither Riddle nor the new professor, Horace Slughorn is the titular Half Blood Prince.

In fact, the Half Blood Prince is merely an unrelated subplot. Harry is learning new spells from a book that once belonged to the Half Blood Prince. They ask about the writer's identity, but never investigate it. Though one would think this would make for a more interesting story. After all, it did work in the second film.

There is a point where Harry Potter is told he must get rid of the book, after a violent confrontation with his rival Draco Malfoy. Why? What did the book have to do with anything? That's a tremendous leap of logic, the type this film has a bit too many of. Perhaps what I'm looking for is within the books the film was based off of. Truth be told, this does not make me wish to learn more by reading the books. On the contrary, i feel the writers of the films have cheated me out of a much better story.

This is a movie, not a book. It's based on the book, but one should not judge it as a copy of the book. Further more, it should work on it's own as a movie. So, why bother with the Half Blood Prince subplot at all? Either make it go somewhere, or just make it go away.


*** out of ****