I saw Harry Potter over the weekend and have to say I really enjoyed it. I am a big fan of the books and the movies for that matter. Sure, they had to cut a lot out of the book for the movie, some of the transitions were rather abrupt, and I have to wonder if it made any sense to someone who hadn’t read the books, but it was highly entertaining and certainly one of the best of the films.
As usual, the film is cast impeccably with Jim Broadbent putting in an outstanding performance as Professor Slughorn, but he’s not the only strong performance. Alan Rickman finally gets a chance to work his acting chops with Snape stepping into the storyline’s spotlight, and I was particularly impressed with Daniel Radcliff’s acting. I guess he learned a few things from being naked onstage in Equus.
Sure, there were a few choices I wasn’t keen on, but the major changes they made (the Christmas at the Burrow and the modified ending) all sat well with me and made sense. (If Harry’s invisible and frozen, we can’t see his reactions, or rather we can’t see him not reacting because he’s frozen.) They developed Luna well, threw Neville in for no reason other than to remind us that he’s there. Kept the major storylines and important plot points.
Of course they had to cut a lot. After all, Half Blood Prince is only less than 100 pages shorter than Deathly Hallows, which is being made into two movies. You could argue therefore that the last 3 movies have had to cut about an entire movie’s worth of material each in their adaptations. (More when you realize Order of the Phoenix is about 100 pages longer then Deathly Hallows, although most of that is just Harry being surly.)
The movie has a lot of humor, a lot of tension and suspense, and the sequence where the student is cursed could be straight out of a horror movie. That shit was creepy. Unlike Order of the Phoenix, which I haven’t seen since it came out, I’ll be seeing this one again soon. Good job.
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