Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince (2009) - Too Much Focus On The Wrong Aspects!

It's well documented that Half-Blood Prince is the darkest shift in tone in the original Harry Potter books, delving deeper into the backstory of our overarching villain, and preparing our leading players for the upcoming final chapter. And this is what makes the film adaptation of this story even more disappointing. What started out as a dark prologue for the grand finale, became a misfocused look at teenage angst!

Rather than delving into these intriguing and dark plot points, the film puts far too much focus on the romantic teenage drama. And while these events are in the original book, they do not take up the bulk of the runtime, yet it is front and centre for the film, and really lets this adaptation down. The darker elements are present in this film, but they feel overshadowed and are not given enough time to be explored thoroughly. The opening 20 minutes for the most part were really well done, introducing these plot points very well. However, the moment the main characters arrive at Hogwarts, the focus quickly slips away, focusing more and more on the romantic tensions, leaving these more interesting plot points in the background. Additionally, the way these romantic plot points are handled ends up being extremely cringe worthy.

This is the story where the principal relationships begin to be properly established, but at this point, I really don't feel convinced by any of these pairings, which is shocking considering how well established they were in the books. Not helped by the fact that writer, Steve Kloves injects some awfully written romantic moments, that is sickening to sit through. Taking the romantic drama out of the equation, the writing is better when focused on the darker sequences, and the cast, particularly Tom Felton and Alan Rickman really conveyed the fear and tension in these scenes. It's just a real shame that these more interesting story beats were ignored in favour of clique love scenes. Not all the darker sequences are well done though. The attack on the borough half way through the film is completely pointless in it's inclusion and features some of the worse romantic dialogue in the film.

The way this film is written also bastardises the characterisation that was previously established. Not only are the relationships that we are meant to be invested in poorly conveyed to us, but even the individual characterisations are a real mess in this film. Ron feels very out of character, showing no real engagement with the main story. It feels like his characterisation has taken steps backwards, and he now appears as an unlikable jerk. As for Harry, Kloves does the character a great disservice by how oblivious he is written to be. There are moments where Harry's responses feels completely blind to the world around him. Additionally, having Harry be seen chatting up other women at the start of the film, and making eyes at people throughout the film makes us see him in the completely wrong light, and again makes selling the relationships they are trying to establish near impossible to make convincing.

The film also suffers from the ugliest colour pallet when it comes to it's cinematography. The brown hues are a disgusting inclusion to a series that for the most part has had a consistent use of colour in it's visual style. There is also use of shaky cam again, but this time it feels too chaotic in how it was used. I would've kept it as a one off camera trick in Order Of The Phoenix, rather than it becoming a staple in the remainder of the series.

This is definitely the weakest of the Harry Potter films, focusing too much on the wrong parts of the story, and not handling the characters and the plot plots they wanted to focus on with respect. After such a well crafted previous film, it's a shame to see David Yates and the production team slip so far thanks to such a poor adaptation of a popular book, and the poor handling of these characters. It's by far not an awful film, but it is indeed the most average film to out of the complete batch of eight films. It leaves the impending climax of this series in the balance, as to whether the production team will actually embrace the darker tones properly, or whether the romance plot points will continue to overshadow the films. But one thing is for sure, it would take a serious lack of care to get a book adaption as seriously misguided as Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince.

SCORES

Story - 3/5

Characters - 3/5

Production - 4/5

Acting - 3/5

Music - 5/5

TOTAL - 7.2/10