Eye Candy #270 - "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:  This movie feels a lot like “The Two Towers”, the second of the LOTR trilogy - it begins in the middle of something and ends in the middle of something else. No pretense or effort whatsoever to bring any novice audience members up to speed. So not the friendliest HP movie for the casual viewer. Continuing the themes from the previous movie of impending doom, loss, and diminishing hope, HP&HBP is the Potter franchise continuing to grow up. These aren’t the same little scamps we were introduced to back in 2001 - now they are teenagers, with all the baggage that entails, including the awkwardness, relationship issues, pimples, breaking voices, and hair in strange places. We are back at Hogwarts, but Voldemort and his Death Eaters are at the door and they‘re playing nasty now, and Dumbledore, the wizened, old, protective school headmaster, is acting very strangely, indeed, drafting Harry to help him with certain tasks aimed at providing Harry the necessary ammunition to bring down Voldemort. Very “Empire Strikes Back-y” as we are left on a particular downcast note, but very well made, with good special effects that don’t seem for their own sake, arguably the best acting from the leads in the series to date. Jim Broadbent in particular is awfully good as Professor Horace Slughorn (every once in a while, we get an actor who just fits into the franchise so well - David Thewlis was one as Lupin). And the kid they have playing the teenaged Tom Riddle (Frank Dillane) is just as creepy as he is great. I trust director David Yates (who did this and “Phoenix”, and is filming “Deathly Hallows“) to bring this series to a close - he gets the gets the gravity of the series, that it’s not all extravagant special effects, which I don’t think all the earlier series directors got. Only complaint I have is length - it absolutely feels like a 153 minute movie. Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”