Harry Potter 6 Review (Semi-Spoilers)

Before I start this off, I want to apologize for not being as active in my blog as I said I would be. Between computer problems and other things, I never got around to putting anything half decent up. My bad.

This isn't going to be a very in-depth review. Just a little overview of what I thought.

I'd read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince about 6 months before the movie came out and I'll have to say that the book was one of my favorites in the series. So, I had high hopes for the movie. For starters, a lot was changed from in the book. I understand that for movie purposes, this has to happen, but I'd have liked them to delve a little deeper into Tom Riddle's childhood. The only flashbacks were to a shortened orphanage scene and to when Tom asks about Horcruxes. The mystery of the Half-Blood Prince is almost entirely absent. Apparation is scrapped. However, I'm not going to judge the movie on similarities to the books, but the director/writers seem to have taken a bit of creative liberty. This really shines in a completely original scene where a group of Dark Wizards plop to the ground in an honest-to-God fireball and attack the Burrow.

I feel like there was a lot of opportunity to make this film pretty scary, but I was sourly disappointed in that aspect. One thing a friend of mine pointed out was that Michael Gambon (the man who plays Dumbledore now) has always played the character a little over-aggressively, but that really seems to work in this story where he is such a central character - he seems to pop like never before. To wrap it all up, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a solid movie that falls just short of what I expected.

Overall rating: 4/5

I'm sure I could write more, but I'm tired and going to a school orientation tomorrow morning. I'll let you know how it goes.