Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (***)

Does this movie need to be reviewed? Maybe not, but anyway…. This is neither my favorite nor my least-favorite of the series, but was enjoyable enough. Steve Kloves, who authored the screenplays for all of the movies except 2007’s Order of the Phoenix, has returned, and David Yates directs his second straight entry in the series. As with the last one, a new teacher (Jim Broadbent, yet another Oscar-nominated British thespian) at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is the impetus for the main storyline. Not as obviously evil as Imelda Staunton’s character in Phoenix, Broadbent’s potions professor is nonetheless mixed up somehow with Alan Rickman’s Severus Snape; Snape is mixed up with Harry’s nemesis and fellow student, Draco Malfoy; and Malfoy is mixed up with Lord Voldemort. I already can’t exactly remember the details, but I mostly followed it as I watched, although a better memory of the other films would have helped.

Voldemort used to be called “He who must not be named,” but Harry and his friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are getting too old for euphemisms. Old enough to have romantic desires, certainly, and even to feel jealous. The increasing maturity of the main characters plays naturally into the increasingly dark feel of the series, yet provides comic relief as well, notably in Ron’s having to contend with a bubbly classmate’s florid crush. While action and fantasy elements, like a luck potion and an exciting quidditch match, continue to play a part in the events, ordinary human desires create the real magic of the series. There is too much going on for the films to create the depth of characters that would make me love them, or that the J. K. Rowlings novels perhaps inspire (I’ve not read any), but there’s enough that I want to see what happens next.

IMDB link

viewed 7/17/09 at AMC Marple; reviewed 8/6/09