Reviews by Kris Mason Harry Potter and the Half Baked Sequel

Let’s go over me and books and movies one more time. I’m a film critic not a book reviewer. When it comes to “storytelling,” I prefer my tales told on celluloid, acted out, beautifully lit and shot, complete with a sweeping soundtrack. Do I read? Sure. If I have read a book and I find out that a movie version is being made, I’m usually excited to see what I have pictured brought to life.

Are the movies better than the books (or books than movies)? I know that the fastest I’ve read 300 pages is about 12 hours. I respect and admire the effort that is put out to condense those dozen hours into a short two, while maintaining the integrity of the story. As for J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, I’ve not read a single book, nor do I intend to. I only know the boy wizard from the first five films in which he has been presented to me. I can only comment on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (the sixth movie – HP6) and not the book-to-film aspect.

So, HP6, what the Hogwarts happened? So far, in the film series, each movie has grown. Harry has grown in age and skill level and swagger; Voldemort has grown progressively into a more human and more powerful form of evil; the mood of the film has grown increasingly darker and scarier and more intense (so much that the forth film had the first PG-13 rating after all the previous installments were PG). HP6 takes the mood and the intensity to its lowest point and its rating back to PG. That might make parents with little kids happy, but will do nothing for the fans who have matured along with the characters.

The School of Magic seems to be stripped down. There are no longer any levitating stair cases, the talking portraits are a thing of the past, and there are no ghosts of professors passed roaming the halls. What’s worse, there is no explanation as to why these elements have disappeared in the first place. Most of the scenes are even void of that Harry Potter, twinkling, magical music. For a film so stripped down, there was not enough content to justify a two hour and forty minute run time.

The title referenced Half Blood Prince is a mystery eventually revealed with no real impact. The layers of the rise of evil are continually cut back by the subplot of “young blossoming love.” The back story took over the plot. Better titled Harry Potter and the Raging Hormones, the only “magic” going on at Hogwarts is a love potion and a Gossip Girl sensibility of who’s got the hots for whom.

The hardest thing for me to believe is that HP6 was directed by the same man who helmed HP5 (the darkest and most sinister, and my favorite so far), David Yates. This was like a bad ABC Family teen date movie. What worries me most is that Mr. Yates is slated to handle the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part one in 2010 and the conclusion in 2011). If the final Rowling’s novel is supposed to be the “Ultimate Battle of Good vs. Evil,” the film adaptation of book 6 has caused me to lower my expectations considerably.