If there is an inferiority curse that struck the odd-numbered installments of the Star Trek movies (a jinx that reversed itself after number 6), then surely there is a correlating and inverse malediction for the Harry Potter features. Perhaps the argument can be made that J.K. Rowling had only sufficient material to load four novels and padded it out to seven. Whatever the reason, this latest chapter is a disappointment exceeded only by the misfire that was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
The story begins portentously enough, with a daring mid-day raid on Diagon Alley that foreshadows darker events. Yet the repercussions of the raid are hollow, as the audience never fully learns who or what the raiders were after, and more unpropitiously, never learns why. Even the rather momentous destruction of the Millennium Bridge by the maleficent Death Eaters is forgotten the instant it occurs, as though its effect on the hitherto unaware muggles of the non-magic world is entirely inconsequential. If it is, why bother showing it? This opening scene is the perfect harbinger of what follows, as the diegesis never climbs out of the desultory rut in which it finds itself so immediately.
The triumvirate of teenage titans in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
The story doesn’t unfold so much as oddments of it get thrown at the screen in the hope that a coherent tapestry will form. It’s the first Harry Potter movie in which nothing seems to actually happen. A prime example comes at the midpoint, when an attack on our heroes arrives out of nowhere and departs in the same direction. Even the budding romances of the hormonal Hogwarts adolescents seem to materialize with little or no prelude, and have all the meaning and insight of a direct-to-DVD John Hughes knock-off. And in the final act, when the Half-Blood Prince is revealed, it is neither revelatory nor meaningful. Despite knowing his identity, one is left wondering exactly what is a Half-Blood Prince and why being one is salient to the story.
Perhaps director David Yates has himself to blame for setting the bar so high in the brisk and bountiful Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Following that, he was perchance destined to dissatisfy.
That’s not to say the movie doesn’t have the occasional gem. Emma Watson has never been better as Hermione Granger. Trading in the eye-brow raising, carping disapproval she’s worn for most of the series, here she is in rare, raw form as a nascent, lovelorn woman. She gets to show a vulnerability — and a dangerously brewing fury — that one hoped would eventually emerge. Tom Felton, having been diminished to little more than a background player in the previous film, is a revelation here as Draco Malfoy, a conflicted juvenile less than eager to fill the vacancy left by his baleful father. He displays some of the finest acting in the entire series by any of the young performers.
The climax is also quite satisfying, as two seasoned actors bring to head the import of years of battle-weary experience and intrigue with nary a word spoken between them. It’s a credit to both and sadly serves to highlight what is so desperately missing from the remainder of the picture.
So, if an alternating-chapter-curse is plaguing the Harry Potter films, it’s a mixed blessing that there’s only one more story to tell, as that story has been bisected, leaving the final theatrical release to its even-numbered fate. Here’s hoping it’s mere happenstance.
From most to least satisfying, a ranking of the Harry Potter films:
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
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