Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince by Joshua Yetman

As the magical series approach its inevitable and long awaited climax, we expected that the sixth instalment of the Harry Potter books will really set to impress the Potter fans across the world with its darker mood. Well, to put it simply, it doesn’t.

David Yates, two time director of the Harry Potter films, continues to make a mess of the process of turning book into film. After the poor performance from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), we were all doubtful about Yates as a Harry Potter director and most of us would have thought that he was going to be replaced by a more proficient director. But he wasn’t. He was selected to direct Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince as well and has been confirmed to direct both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

So just what has he done with the sixth instalment?

The first thing I can say, and I’m sure that plenty of people will agree with me when I say this, is that Half Blood Prince is a definite improvement over the previous film. Order of the Phoenix was horribly rushed and poorly directed, but there were brief moments of magnificence in the form of excellent special effects.

I’m afraid to say that Half Blood Prince hasn’t learned from all its mistakes made in Order of the Phoenix. It too is rather rushed, but at least the film has a better plot and the dark mood is more pronounced. It certainly doesn’t come anywhere near to the famous and memorable films of the Potter series, Philosophers Stone included, but it certainly isn’t last, not by a long shot.

Half Blood Prince opens to a rather spectacular sequence, with the iconic Millennium Bridge destroyed in a Death Eater rampage. This short introductory piece is what Warner Bros has been splicing into their Half Blood Prince trailers, but the whole scene is nothing short of stunning.

However, the start of the film is the only interesting part for about half-and-hour. The movie becomes rather dull and slow, and the plot doesn’t develop until much later in the film.

To me, the most important factor in a Harry Potter film is how well the movie reflects the book it is based on. Sure, the longer the book the harder it becomes to squeeze it into a two and a half hour period (I particularly sympathize David Yates’s approach to Order of the Phoenix, the longest book in the series at 766 pages. The movie could have been much worse, but I am still perplexed at why the film was around 15 minutes shorter than the other films in the franchise) but it doesn’t help when they make scenes up that were not in the book at all to try to make it more visually appealing (although, even I have to admit the scene where the Death Eaters attack the Burrow was tense and exciting).

The worst factor of this film was the amount of comedy, which was worse than even Order of the Phoenix, which was funny enough. I don’t watch a Harry Potter film for excessive amounts of comedy; I watch it for plot and a sense of relevance to the book. Previous directors, including the American legend Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Potter films, have perfectly balanced the amount of comedy with a sense of plot, but Yates suddenly decided to throw in a great big bag of comedy which, in my opinion, ruined the film and distracted the plot.

Of course, Half Blood Prince has its good moments, if only moments. The scenes near the end of the film, including the scene within the cave and Dumbledore’s ultimate demise, are enthralling.

However, I think that one of the best aspects of the film was the actual composition of the music. Never before have I heard such emotional and stunning music, which was composed by Nicholas Hooper. I really think that Hooper should of stayed to compose the music for Deathly Hallows, but I’m sure legend John Williams, who is the actual composer for Deathly Hallows, can compose pleasing music for that film.

So, in conclusion, I can say that Half Blood Prince doesn’t make the top of the heap, but certainly doesn’t hit the bottom. Let’s just hope that Deathly Hallows redeems Yates of the two rather average Potter films he has already made.