Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a crowning achievement

By Vanessa Ho

If you haven't read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince then stop reading this review now. I am warning you that this review will be filled with spoilers. Last warning. Alright, you've been warned and after waiting eight months for the film version to come out, I think I can be a bit spoilerish.

If it wasn't for getting into The Twilight Saga, I would think these past eight months would have been unbearable but thankfully I got into and it helped dull the pain but as the weeks to the premiere ofHP6 started creeping up, I became increasingly anxious to see it.

Well, the wait was well worth it. Steve Kloves returns as screenwriter after taking a break from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (or HP5) and he has again done a marvelous job of distilling a quite wieldy book into a digestible and enjoyable movie. Just like he did with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (HP4), he has made the right plot cuts to help keep the movie going forward.

Unfortunately, he made some cuts that I didn't agree with such as Harry inheriting 12 Grimmauld Place from Sirius Black and the fact that he also inherited Kreacher. I hope that these very important plot points are in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one.
I am not going to bother writing a plot synopsis because if you are reading this, you have already read the books.

What I loved about the movie is basically Ginny (Bonnie Wright). I was so happy to see Wright's name finally make it to the credits. I have been so disappointed in how the filmmakers marginalized her role in the movies that it so great that she was such a major character in this film. Sure, she is Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe) love interest but she was simply amazing in the confidence she exudes not only in her feelings for Harry but in her abilities as a witch.
I also loved that finally after five movies of merely hinting at Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint and Emma Watson) they finally are hitting us over the head with the fact that Hermione really fancies Ron and shows great jealousy over Ron's relationship with Lavender Brown (a perfectly cast Jessie Cave). The scene after Ron gets poisoned and he is in the hospital wing with Ginny and Hermione at his bedside and the Lavender comes rushing in demanding to see Ron (or Won Won –thanks Kloves for keeping that bit in from the books), because she is after all Ron's girlfriend and gets jealous after seeing Hermione there and demands to know why she is there. Hermione stands up and says "I'm his friend" and then Ron proceeds to say Hermione's name in his sleep making Hermione happy and effectively breaking up (later much to Ron's happiness) with Lavender. My favourite part of the book and now movie. I've always loved Ron and Hermione and I hope how their relationship is depicted in Deathly Hallows will be great in the movie.

And Freddie Stroma as Cormac McLaggen, a Gryffindor who takes a fancy to Hermione, has the right amount of blowhardness.

One of the things that I love about the Harry Potter movies is the casting. They always get it right, they did an awesome job in finding Evanna Lynch as she is the perfect Luna Lovegood and getting Imelda Staunton to be Dolores Umbridge in the last movie. This movie brings us Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn, Hogwart's new potions master that also holds a key memory that delves into the history of Voldemort.

I also finally accepted Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. It took three movies to finally shake Richard Harris' interpretation of the Hogwart's headmaster.

The scene that did that for me was of Gambon and Radcliffe in the cave was lifted straight from the book and director David Yates and Kloves brought it to life in a very chilling sense. Those Inferi were indeed frightening and also having to watch Dumbledore drink that potion to retrieve what they think is one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.

As with Wright, I am so happy that they gave Tom Felton so much more to do than he ever did in the entire film series. His Draco Malfoy had the perfect mixture of school bully and emotional confliction over the task Voldemort asked him to perform. It was also awesome to see Alan Rickman do so much more as Snape than in previous movies.

Other highlights his Nicholas Hooper's wonderful score and the scene with Katie Bell getting poisoned by necklace was also very frightening.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is right now my favourite movie adaptation of JK Rowling's boy wizard book series followed by Goblet of Fire, Prisoner of Azkaban (except for that final frame), Philosopher's Stone, Order of the Phoenix (I still disagree with some of the cuts) and Chamber of Secrets (those spiders still freak me out).

I look forward to seeing HP6 again but this time in IMAX. I really want to know what scenes are in 3D and also I want to catch all the stuff I might have missed.