Half-Blood Prince Review: Meh

As a sign that I have grown since my last Harry Potter review I will admit that there is, as far as I can tell, no available rubric by which one can assess a Harry Potter film except to compare it to other Harry Potter films. And on that scale Half-Blood Prince deserves a resounding "It wasn't as bad as Order of the Phoenix." Truthfully, though, I have no idea how to review a Harry Potter movie, how to assess a Harry Potter movie.

The movies are not the books. Alright, we are clear on that. But then what are the movies understood to be? Are these companion pieces? Are these part of their own narrative? Or is each movie a stand-alone entity beholden to nothing but that which appears on the screen?

This is what Half-Blood Prince provides: teenage melodrama. I do not mean that to be pejorative; a significant chunk of the movie is primarily teenage melodrama. The majority of the subplots concerned the whole Ron / Heronme non-relationship drama with a pinch of Harry and Ginny thrown in. And this is the crux of my problem when trying to write this review.

The review I want to write focuses upon Half-Blood Prince as a waste of a movie. This movie could have been the Voldemort movie; a movie the majority of which was back story and trips into the pensive to view the historical progression from Tom Riddle to Voldemort. That would have been a kick-ass movie. We could have hit every scene with Dumbledore and Harry looking at memories. We could have had segments of exposition wherein Dumbledore explains to Harry and the audience what the fuck is going on. We could have cleared up all of the ignored subplots of past movies and explained how Harry's scar fits into the Voldemort plot which propels the entire series.

But then I look at what the movie actually was: teenage melodrama stilted on awkward psuedo-exposition trying to cobble together Draco's treachery, Voldemort's past, the Order of the Phoenix's consternation, and Slughorn's crazy-old-man eyes. There is enough melodrama to overshadow the plot undercurrents yet there is just enough exposition on the larger Harry / Voldemort conflict to make me wonder why it was not embellished.

I think the movie strives to be primarily stand-alone and so focuses upon teenage melodrama in order to both meet the expectations of its primary audience and not expect too much from them at the same time. We assume that people are familiar with the characters and so do not have to provide a wealth of introductions yet do not rely upon this supposed understanding on the part of the audience to build a strong narrative which drives the overall plot foreward. Yet I wonder if this construction is at all sensible. Do we suppose that what fans want is to see Ron and Heronme being awkward rather than memories related to Voldemort? If Half-Blood Prince is any indication then the reply is an overwhelming probably.

While this is not the movie I wanted it pissed me off less than Order of the Phoenix. But I have to wonder if my lack of anger is the result of the quality of the movie or my own numbness to the franchise. And at the moment my guess is that I just stopped expecting anything from these movies in terms of exposition, coherence, or storytelling and rather pay $7 to see gratuitous shots of Emma Watson's ass.