Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Bored Prince

We saw “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” Whoopee... there wasn’t much else to see anyways, and the screening time of “Public Enemies” was oddly late. So “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” it was...

I also had this little light bulb in my head for a spoof movie called “Horny Pot-Heads and the Half-Sized President”...

First thing I need to get off my chest is that while I am not a true Harry and Hogwarts fan, I have always admired the level of imagination that author J.K. Rowling has put into the series. I have never read any of the books, and though I have never found myself queuing on “Potter” movies’ first few nights, I have always felt compelled to at least know the on-goings of the tales.

Somehow, I believe Harry Potter is this generation’s Luke Skywalker, and has become indelible in popular culture regardless of the supposed over-exposure. Could be a source of creative ideas for ads in the near future...

So, on to the movie we went...

"...I believe Harry Potter is this generation’s Luke Skywalker, and has become indelible in popular culture regardless of the supposed over-exposure..."

Somewhere through the third movie, my amusement at the floating candles, concept of high-speed quiddich games, animated photographs on print and other visual nuances of the Potter-verse thinned out and vanished. And being someone who never treated previous Potter movies like biology class frogs that I had to dissect for absolutely no reason at all than being a sado-masochistic geek, I found “Half Blood Prince” to be quite weighted upon by the series’ history.
Funnily enough, the one biggest event of note in “Half-Blood Prince” was a major character’s death. And it wasn’t even done in a mega-neck-pain-inducing wand duel or all-out slug-fest. No, this was done in a quiet, confrontational “oh-look-he’s-dead-now” kind of way...

"...[Snape is] probably Rowling's favorite character, second only to Harry himself..."

By and large, one will also start to notice that with the exception of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson (who is getting hotter by the minute), all these Brit kids are growing up rather unattractively.

Sufficient googling will render many spoilers as to the relevance of the enjoyable Alan Rickman’s Severius Snape. Besides, it was too freaking obvious from the start that Snape was not just your typical “bad guy.” He's probably Rowling's favorite character, second only to Harry himself...

Given that “Half-Blood Prince” is the penultimate chapter in the “Potter” saga, I suppose it was no surprise that the whole movie felt more like a set up for the finale rather than an actual story on its own merit. I’m sure fans loved it though...

As for me and the wife... we dutifully ate the pop corn, tried hard to not fall asleep at the movie, then dutifully went straight home to find a sleeping Margaret...

Yawn yawn yawn... ‘catch you later...