The Harry Potter movie series snaps back into shape with No. 6 in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” a sumptuous installment that worries less about inventing mini-plots and concentrates more on the overarching story line.
The kid wizards at Hogwarts School are growing up fast. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) has been “outed” as “the chosen one,” and is even more a target for the dark side. As the movie begins, we learn that classmate Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) is gunning for Harry this year.
We also see instructor Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) in a new way. But Harry’s key co-star here is Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), the uber-wizard who brings a significant new teacher, Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), to Hogwarts.
It’s Harry’s job to finagle important information out of Professor Slughorn. In the meantime, the school year progresses, and the students, notably Harry and his best friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), go through the typical stuff of teenage anxiety.
With the added tension, of course, of magic spells and a war between good and evil. The title refers to an inscription Harry finds in an old potion-making textbook: Who was the Half-Blood Prince?
Director David Yates is back from the previous “Potter” film and screenwriter Steve Kloves returns to the fold. They’ve made things more streamlined than previous episodes; the storytelling doesn’t feel as blocky or as beholden to cramming in as much detail as possible from J.K. Rowling’s book.
It’s also a stupendous-looking movie: Yates and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (“Amelie”) have turned “Half-Blood Prince” into a visual feast. The unbelievably crisp digital video seems to capture every shaft of light in Snape’s office and every hair in Dumbledore’s mighty beard.
This one takes its time (and goes 153 minutes), which means we get more of Hermione and Ron — a weakness of the previous episode. “Half-Blood Prince” puts the focus less on giant flying creatures and more on the interplay between the human characters.
This is a welcome change in emphasis. In fact, this movie loses its momentum when it goes for the big special-effects scenes, such as Harry and Dumbledore trekking down to a cave and drinking potion.
Another problem is delayed action: There’s very little in the climactic half-hour that couldn’t have happened earlier in the school year — except that Rowling’s books are arranged on an academic term and that’s the way it has to be.
I can’t claim to be a huge fan of the “HP” movie series overall, because they’ve never shaken the feeling of being a book franchise dutifully, and usually awkwardly, adapted for film. As an exception, “Half-Blood Prince” is worth celebrating.
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