[Somehow this film, too, slipped through the cracks in my trying to get this blog up to speed. I saw it in July, I think.]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the 6th movie in the Harry Potter series based on J.K. Rowling‘s book of the same name. It was directed by David Yates and stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, David Thewlis and Jim Broadbent.

[SPOILERS for the WHOLE SERIES after this point.]

Plot:
Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is in his sixth year at Hogwarts (school for wizadry). He finds a mysterious book that belonged to the half-blood prince and the notes in it help him star in Prof. Slughorn’s (Jim Broadbent) potion class. At the same time he works together with Prof. Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) to find out more about Lord Voldemort and his weaknesses.

The Half-Blood Prince is definitely the weakest of all the Potter movies so far. The plot’s all over the place, things happen you can only understand if you’ve read the books and HOLY SHIT! they spoil the seventh book/movie. What the hell?

I don’t think I’ve said it here, but if I did, I’ll gladly say it again: David Yates is the worst thing that could have happened to this series and that he gets to do the last four films is even more of a catastrophe. He can’t pace his stories, he can’t even manage to have one constant plot. Instead, his plot is all over the place. Watching the Half-Blood Prince is like watching an ADD bunny: “Oh, I gotta tell you about this it’s so interesting and then oh shit I need to tell you this first and have you seen this and what was I talking about? yeah right there’s this thing I gotta tell you but first have a piece of cake and by the way the whole point of the thing is and yeah so the story…”

It’s unbelievably annoying. And it leads to massive spoilers.

I can live with the fact that they completely butchered the whole Tonks-Lupine thing (no courtship, no nothing, just a “honey” all of a sudden?) because, okay, while I love their story, it’s not really a central one.

But why, why would you go ahead and completely spoil the seventh book/movie and the whole Snape thing? What purpose could that serve?

And all the relationship stuff was so badly done, I really wished Mike Newell would come back. Because he knows how to handle that.

Well. Apart from that, it was fine. The acting’s good, the supporting cast is great and the special effects were well done.

So, summarising: it definitely is the weakest movie so far and it makes me afraid of what the last two will be like but it didn’t put me off watching the rest (I don’t think that anything could).