The Half-Blood Prince is a ham-fisted clod-fest that makes one cringe from start to finish.

There is no art; there is no subtlety. There is no story telling skills or deftness. It is brutally pedantic and reflects a clear lack of understanding on the part of the writer and director when it comes to archetypes and mythology.

I hate this director so much. I have nothing left but to hope that, due to the desert wasteland of 'creativity' in hollywood, that the entire series will be remade in a decade or so.

The only problem with a remake is that this series is BRILLIANTLY cast. :(

How can someone think that this movie is finished and distributable? The pathetically low standards america is known for regarding art and entertainment is painfully evident in this movie.

I think it has something to do with where they've projected the decimal point will wind up.

We can't boycott anything; we can't resist. We are compulsive consumers. I wish I could brag that I will boycott the book 7 movies (yawn), but I will probably see them and hate them too.

When the last book came out, nobody said "I'm going to wait seven or eight weeks to purchase it, in order to demonstrate that I'm not a slave to my consumer impulses." And I can't recall reading a single post here in which someone said "I've already reserved my copy at the library." And I'm sure that no one anywhere said "I'm going to a free public reading of the book so that I don't have to buy it."

Sure, readers will justify their enthusiasm in terms of their fondness for the characters or the storytelling or for Rowling herself, but in the end it's exactly the same thing: running out to give money to someone else.


Hey, I'm not condemning anyone for it, because I do exactly the same thing with stuff that I choose to spend money on.

I want to add that Rowling had 6 books, each arguably better than the last, when #7 came out. Further, her stories are so good, that I will likely waste more money to see the rest of the tale poorly translated into 'cinema'.

As I mentioned, I am equally eager to get my hands on books or films or music or trinkets that appeal to me, so I'm in no position to criticize anyone for their enthusiasm!

Too bad they couldn't have had someone as skilled as him direct them all. But HBP wasn't nearly as bad as you are stating, IMHO. But suum quique.

how her characterization of Hagrid is so feeble--it's because she did a lot of the parts of 7 long ago, and didn't try to update some of the things she'd already written. Hagrid has been so important to all of the books and films, too, and each book made him a deeper character, and then you end up with a buffoon in 7.

I do like the closure of some things, but her point about war--claiming that we lose so much in a war--could have been made with less characters dying. Remus was one of my favorite characters (Sirius, too) and I think that one of the Marauders should have managed to see the future without Voldemort. Killing off Percy instead of Fred would have been a wonderfully maudlin moment, after he has finally rejected the Ministry stance and made up with his parents.

At the local thrift store.

Not for me, even. For when my kid gets older. I figure he'll probably want to read them in about 8 years or so. :D

The first three or so books are charming and fun, but right around book 4, the story starts kicking SERIOUS ass...

Stick with it and you will be amply rewarded. :)

the library - well in advance of publication, and there were already lots of people in line in front of them.

Good for them, I suppose.

rave reviews, I'm thinking you might not be right here.
There's always someone.

Considering I've liked all the other HP movies well enough, I'd be surprised if I didn't. I loved the book as well.

What a fucking travesty of a rendition of a subtle and layered tale.

was Daniel Radcliffe having some FUN with
the role, for once.

Bad script, bad acting, unintentional homosexual overtones
in almost every scene.

Weak female roles....yet the boys seem almost passive!

:puke:

beginning was good, middle drab, and then it was just over...

I looked over at my wife and I was like, that's it? Of COURSE there will be a sequal... Harry has some killin to do now :rofl:

the last book is being made in two parts.

but i dont expect much

I don't think you can expect a lot of nuance from a book or movie that has to be understandable by the 3-year-olds clamoring to see it, or mom will get upset. Or the 13 or 33 year olds who have the attention span of a 3-year-old.

You want subtlety, rent a Bergman film.

A younger friend of mine insisted that we watch "Labyrinth" and "The Sandlot" because I'd not seen these movies that she loved as a kid. Honestly, they were both pretty dreadful and "ham-fisted" to me -- I guess because I didn't have the advantage of seeing them when I was 10 or 12 and romanticizing them for years. I went back and watched a couple of Disney movies I remember loving as a kid -- The World's Greatest Athlete and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes -- and while they stirred a certain nostalgia for them, they were really pretty awful.

not Phillip Pullman- level, but not simplistic either.

I though the Spanish director of a few of the films did a pretty good job, actually.

'Are we there yet? Well, not quite. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the latest big-screen iteration of the global phenomenon, is merely the sixth chapter in a now eight-part series that, much like its young hero, played by Daniel Radcliffe, has begun to show signs of stress around the edges, a bit of fatigue, or maybe that’s just my gnawing impatience. Not that the director, David Yates, doesn’t keep things moving and flying and soaring, his cameras slashing through the gloom that has settled onto this epic endeavor like a damp, enveloping fog and at times threatened to snuff out its joy as terminally as a soul-sucking Dementor.

That any sense of play and pleasure remains amid all the doom and the dust, the poisonous potions and murderous sentiments, is partly a testament to the remarkable sturdiness of this movie franchise, which has transformed in subtle and obvious fashion, changing in tandem with the sprouting bodies and slowly evolving personalities of its young, now teenage characters. The series is now almost as old (it took off in 2001) as Harry was when he started his journey, which found the orphan whisked after his 11th birthday from a cramped, tragic nook to Hogwarts, a school of witchcraft and wizardry in a parallel world teeming with wondrous creatures, including an embarrassment of lavishly talented British screen actors.

Surgically adapted by Steve Kloves, who has written all the screenplays save for No. 5, “The Half-Blood Prince” was to be the penultimate film, the corollary to the J. K. Rowling book. Instead, the concluding volume, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” has been deemed hefty enough by Warner Brothers — 784 hardcover pages, 2.4 pounds shipping weight, a fight to the death — to be split into two movies that will hit in late 2010 and summer 2011. Considering that the take for Harry Potter and His Big Pot of Cinematic Gold now totals almost $4.5 billion in international box office, the studio’s reluctance to embrace the end is touchingly obvious.'

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/movies/15harry.html

I'm a big Harry Potter fan, and even though the books are better than the movies, Yates directed Order Of The Phoenix (a movie I liked.) Unlike with music, I do use movie reviews as a guide (since I'm not a big movie fan and music is more subjective) - most of the reviews for Half Blood Prince are good. I'm a little concerned that the movies go so dark and sophisticated that they also lose a little of the charm Rowling's books have, but I'll have to see.

I'm not really seeing quite what the kvetching is about. I thought it was much better than the last film.

There's always naysayers, but I am surprised at all of this!

It does vary from the book. They do cut a lot and change events.

On its face, however, it is a great movie. Draco Malfoy's turmoil was quite surprising. I thought Draco stole the show.

Go and see it. I don't think that you will be disappointed.

there was more quietness, depth and atmospherics than I expected. It fit the mood of the book in many ways...


:shrug:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

there too for the ring that Smells Like Teen Spirit :)

but most of the opinions i've heard have been very positive.

i'm waiting to see it at the imax- all the imax theatres around here still have that transformer drek playing.

there were a few parts that were well done, but the pacing was bad, there was little subtlety and they changed shit that didn't need to be changed.

here's what i don't understand (and this has long been a rant of mine regarding movie adaptations of very popular books), the books were obviously good enough to sell millions and millions and millions of copies, so why do they feel the need to cut things that are important to the story line and just make shit up?

Especially because they proceeded to add bullshit like Harry's chase after Bellatrix and the burning of the Burrow, belying time concerns. What was the point of that? Give us the Scrimgeour scene instead.

is when Bellatrix and Narcissa go to see Snape. In the book Bellatrix lists several issues she has with Snape's loyalty to Voldemort; Snape answers each of these points in a brilliantly written way. It is critical to the story because it really ratchets up the suspense as to whom he is truly loyal. They set it up, then trimmed it all down to 1 sentence for each character.

things that weren't even in the book?? WTF?

Still, though, I enjoyed it.

i understand that there need to be cuts, but why cut things to make room for stuff that didn't even happen in the book?

it wasn't a bad movie, it was just an awful movie adaptation of a book.

I rarely get to see someone agreeing with me about a director!! *shakes hand*

I haven't seen it yet, but I busted this guy Yates during OOTP he was so awful. Good directing doesn't MEAN shoving a point down your throat, or being in your face. Good directing is good when it doesn't show.

Seriously, thank you for the review--I'm going this late afternoon to see it with a friend, but I will be on the lookout for bad directing. With this guy directing 7&8 as well, it's going to suck if he doesn't get better.

rudimentary knowledge of editing. It is so choppy. They even use the 'I see you got my message' trick instead of spending a few seconds actually receiving the message. As one realizes what is cut out and what is fabricated whole cloth, these choices are infuriating.

:P

the last two films have been the worst by far.

Word to the wise!

Even if I hate the movie, I am a consumerist slave.

on the big screen!! lol Sorry - I have a thing for Alan Rickman - Gary Oldman too.

Thanks to the OP for the warning. I actually had seen a couple of the movies before I decided to read the books (I kept thinking they were only for kids) as my daughter was 9 when they started coming out. I realized that they were much better than the movies and good light reading for adults.

It sounds like another "Goblet of Fire". I didn't like that one either.

All I could see was Harry's hair. I've watched it a total of twice, when compared to hundreds for Azkaban and well into double-digits for the first two.

All that said, I thought I liked OotP, but it hasn't held up. I hate the way Sirius died and I'm not as impressed by the V/D fight at the end as I was. And so now I'm ambivalent about this new one b/c same director.