Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Dear god, this movie was boring.
Y'know, if they cut back the teenagers mooning over their hormones and all the relationship crap not necessary for the story, then the film would have been considerably shorter and more interesting.
See, this is what pisses me off about a lot of "teen" movies-- plot takes a back seat to the relationships. It's precisely what's wrong with Twilight (and the whole women-are-sex-crazed-and-boys-need-to-be-dominant thing, and the sheer stupidity of the supposed heroine). Twilight has the undertone of an interesting plot-- mortal girl knows too much, Cullens are abnormal in the vampire world, werewolf boys wax their chests-- but any real meaning and message is bogged down by the stupidity of the characters and that strange phenomenon that prevents any character from being and remaining single throughout the story (as if life is only worth whomever you're snogging).
It's something you see in Harry Potter. No one is happy to be alone (except maybe Luna, but she's not exactly depicted as stable). No one can retain their independence from a romantic relationship and still be kickass. It's like that whole idea that people are just supposed to accept that the love of their life is conveniently living within a few miles.
But I digress.
Overall, if you can sit through it, it's technically a decent movie. But it's focus is all over the place, it skips over interesting characters (like Luna, Hagrid, Snape...), the character development is cardbord-cut-out at best (Draco is a wuss, we got that when Hermione punched him in the face), and it just feels like everything is stitched together as a filler episode. A sort of "this is an important plot device, fuck you if you wanted a real, contained story" thing.
The music and Luna's lines are still the best thing about the whole movie, but by the time Dumbledore was drinking the gunk (yeah, spoiler alert for the people under rocks), I was tempted to skip ahead.
I shouldn't have to bring up things like "the book is better" or "it's for the fans" because, you know what? That's a cop out. Lord of the Rings was based off a book, and so was Chronicles of Narnia and both of those were excellent movies that didn't need to be justified by the books. There are hundreds of movies based off of books that are perfectly acceptable forms of entertainment and accessible to non-fans. This Half-Blood Prince is not one of them.
I maintain that Prisoner of Azkaban is the best book and movie of the series, seconded by Goblet of Fire, if only because even the movies focused on the plot of the individual piece as well as the full arc rather than the idiot main characters chasing after their hormones.
Overall, the film felt like I was watching bits and pieces of something bigger patched together like a badly made quilt. It staggered, got distracted, and flopped all over the place that I felt genuinely bad for the writers who had to sign their names to that script.
Y'know, if they cut back the teenagers mooning over their hormones and all the relationship crap not necessary for the story, then the film would have been considerably shorter and more interesting.
See, this is what pisses me off about a lot of "teen" movies-- plot takes a back seat to the relationships. It's precisely what's wrong with Twilight (and the whole women-are-sex-crazed-and-boys-need-to-be-dominant thing, and the sheer stupidity of the supposed heroine). Twilight has the undertone of an interesting plot-- mortal girl knows too much, Cullens are abnormal in the vampire world, werewolf boys wax their chests-- but any real meaning and message is bogged down by the stupidity of the characters and that strange phenomenon that prevents any character from being and remaining single throughout the story (as if life is only worth whomever you're snogging).
It's something you see in Harry Potter. No one is happy to be alone (except maybe Luna, but she's not exactly depicted as stable). No one can retain their independence from a romantic relationship and still be kickass. It's like that whole idea that people are just supposed to accept that the love of their life is conveniently living within a few miles.
But I digress.
Overall, if you can sit through it, it's technically a decent movie. But it's focus is all over the place, it skips over interesting characters (like Luna, Hagrid, Snape...), the character development is cardbord-cut-out at best (Draco is a wuss, we got that when Hermione punched him in the face), and it just feels like everything is stitched together as a filler episode. A sort of "this is an important plot device, fuck you if you wanted a real, contained story" thing.
The music and Luna's lines are still the best thing about the whole movie, but by the time Dumbledore was drinking the gunk (yeah, spoiler alert for the people under rocks), I was tempted to skip ahead.
I shouldn't have to bring up things like "the book is better" or "it's for the fans" because, you know what? That's a cop out. Lord of the Rings was based off a book, and so was Chronicles of Narnia and both of those were excellent movies that didn't need to be justified by the books. There are hundreds of movies based off of books that are perfectly acceptable forms of entertainment and accessible to non-fans. This Half-Blood Prince is not one of them.
I maintain that Prisoner of Azkaban is the best book and movie of the series, seconded by Goblet of Fire, if only because even the movies focused on the plot of the individual piece as well as the full arc rather than the idiot main characters chasing after their hormones.
Overall, the film felt like I was watching bits and pieces of something bigger patched together like a badly made quilt. It staggered, got distracted, and flopped all over the place that I felt genuinely bad for the writers who had to sign their names to that script.